`` Constantly Risking Absurdity `` By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

This is a very lyrical poem. The speaker's emotions and intentions are made very clear in very inconspicuous ways. The subtle repetition of certain words and images give the poem a very distinct tone. For example, the repetition of the words

A less theoretical definition of poetry is, “putting the best words in the best possible order.” A poet may incorporate the theory as follows. The poet may astutely choose words possibly with a double meaning in order to indirectly convey a message, evoke emotions, or to slander. Then, the poet may unconventionally place such words and phrases perhaps out of expected order for the sake of creating a “word picture,” emphasizing the speaker’s feelings, or offering tangibility to the poem. By implementing this idea onto poetic works, the poet will have auspiciously written a superb poem. This theory may be applied to a few of Catullus’s poems specifically “Carmen 5”, “Carmen 8”, and “Carmen 85.” Catullus’s meticulous choice of words and arrangement highlight the central focus of the poem, obliquely criticize traditional Roman law, manipulate the audience’s attitude, transmit the speaker’s emotions, paint “word pictures,” and offer symbolic meaning consequently producing a successful poem.

The simple actions of the “chase” eventually develop more complicated actions displaying the avoidance to be dragged down. The metamorphosis of the narrative from realism to surrealism happens in the poems ending depicting the pile of stacked bodies as

Style is the special way an author creates his or her work. Gabriela Mistral exploits an informal style in her poem “Ballad”. The poem discusses the poets feelings and is written in first person point of view validating its informality; “My heart’s blood.”-Line17 using ‘my’ and describing her heart confirm this. Diction contributes to style in an extensive way. Repetition is a form of diction that is heavily spread out through the poem. “Saw him pass by.”-Lines 2/6, “He goes loving.../...in bloom”-Lines1-2/11-12, and “He will go.../through eternity.”-Lines 19-20/23-24. The repetition emphasizes the authors style an diction. In this poem diction is displayed through negative connotation. Choosing to describe her emotional state as “,wretched,”-Line 5, instead of sad or unhappy, and by adding a

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

George Szirtes article “Formal Wear: Notes on Rhyme, Meter, Stanza, and Pattern” from the Poetry Foundation opens with opinions which focus on limitations of poetic form. As a counter to these common arguments, Szirtes claims, “Verse is not decoration: it is structural. It is a forming principle and words at depth” ("Formal Wear: Notes” 2). He then develops an argument explaining, “the constraints of form are spurs of the imagination: that they are in fact the chief producers of imagination” ("Formal Wear: Notes” 2). Taking these ideas into consideration Szirtes incorporates the idea of language explaining how language connects to memory and imagination which come together to form poetic images. Additionally, when poets use form it develops

John Updike arranges structure in the poem to create the specific feeling of having one’s heart change from seeing something beautiful. The beginning of the poem starts with a couplet that describes the setting; a man-made golf course “on Cape Ann in October” (1). Enjambment is integrated throughout the poem to surprise the reader and create anticipation. For example, in lines 8-9, enjambment adds tension as the narrator describes what he sees in the sky. The entire poem is free verse, this emphasizes the flight of the birds and how nature has no true rhythm. By using free verse, the reader is unable to predict what will happen next and uncertainty is added. Without the free verse, the poem would feel unrelaxed and harsh. In lines 50-1, Updike changes the word order to startle the reader and conclude the poem in an interesting and memorable way. The poet manipulates the structure to provide a suspenseful mood and make the reader feel interested in the storyline.

In the story Harrison Bergeron wrote by Kurt Vonnegurt, the figurative language and theme play a key role in setting different moods. One type of figurative language used by the author was a simile to describe Harrison and the ballerina’s dancing and gracefulness. For example,on page 26, Vonnegurt writes, “They leaped like deer on the moon”. This quote makes the reader feel the mood of freedom. The second type of figurative language used by the author was imagery to describe how the the girl looked without her mask on.

Lastly, I noticed the use of rhetorical questions in the poem. For example, In stanza four, the speaker asks, “How would you prefer to die, on a perfect April evening with young men gossiping and smoking

symbolic richness, but at the same time the poem supplies the reader with a wide

At a first glimpse, it is common to overlook the difference between a character who only wears black to one who only wears white, yet the color of a character’s clothes reveal much more than a mere color preference. First of all, white is a symbol for life and purity while black represents death and evil so it is safe to assume that the character who wears black condemns himself to a miserable fate while the one in white blooms with cheerfulness. The decision of a poet to embed symbols into their works is not accidental. Symbolism gives a new dimension to the meaning of a literary work. The symbolism employed in the poems “A Noiseless Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, and the “The Sick Rose” by William Blake portray the author’s purpose of loneliness, decision making, and the corruption of secret love.

Nature is calm and serene, while this boy’s life has changed in a matter of seconds from living to dead in a tragic event. The end-stopped lines and enjambments are used very well in the remainder of the poem.

In addition to providing examples of things he or she isn’t frightened of, the speaker briefly explains, towards the end of the poem, how it feels to be “fear-free” by stating ‘I can walk the ocean floor and never have to breathe.” (39-40) which is a metaphor, as one cannot actually walk the ocean floor and not breathe, however, this quote describes the possibly brave and pleased feeling of the speaker because he or she has nothing to fear. The rhyming is in a AAA, BBA, CCA, … format for most most of the poem except the middle where it is more of a AA, BB, CC, … pattern, making the poem interesting, as well as engaging and fun to

“Storm Warnings,” true to its literal subject matter, possesses flowy sweeping syntax created by the strategic use of commas and phrasing to draw parallels between the physical oncoming winds and the gales of life. The author crafts a long run-on sentence that spans the first stanza and carries on into the latter portion of the second to mirror the continuous flowing of windy weather and the forward motion of life. Once the speaker notices the brewing storm, they “walk from window to closed window, watching boughs strain against the sky.” In this portion of the affromented run-on sentence, alliteration, rhythm, and the repetition of words all contribute to the impression of movement. The various “w” sounds at the beginnings of words and the repetition of the word “window” create a sensation of continuously flowing forward, especially when read aloud; the comma adds a small swirling pause to the rhythm, which is then soon after resumed with the word “watching.” Just as the poem rhythmically moves forward with its long phrases connected with frequent commas, so must life carry on with each additional experience, whether it be misfortunes or joys. The elongated syntax allows all these elements to work together within sentences to highlight the similarities between physical storms and emotional struggle and to stress the inevitability of predicaments in life.

The form of ‘God’s Grandeur’ is an Italian sonnet, but with some alteration. Even though Hopkins does not use sprung rhythm here, he varies his sonnet structure from the traditional iambic pentameter. Typically, a sonnet contains 3 quatrains (4 lines) and a couplet (2 lines); the Italian sonnet is characterized by having 1 octave (8 lines) and 1 sestet (6 lines). In ‘God’s Grandeur’ a similar pattern is followed, however, Hopkins presents a technique he often employs in other works as well, that of using the octet to present a personal or a sensory experience and the octet in order to provide some reflection on the topic (Gardner 221).