People on the Edge in Poems: Stealing, Hitcher, Education for Leisure and Laboratory

Poems can have many different meanings, some darker and deeper than others, and are concealed in a puzzle of metaphors and figurative language. “The Road Not Taken” written by Robert Frost, “The Road at The End” written by Carl Sandburg, “Song of the Open Road” written by Walt Whitman, and “The Journey” written by Mary Oliver all have different meanings than first perceived. “Song of the Open Road” depicts positive feelings in the protagonist. “The Road Not Taken” is a fairly neutral point of view of life as it is neither positive nor negative. “The Journey” can be categorized as neutral as well, but has hints of negativity, and as for “The Road at The End,” it takes a dark twist as “The End” is perceived as the end of life.

In The Seafarer the man faces conflict of how he decided to live his life. Although he beat himself up over not having a family he still decided to get back on the ship, because to him the sea was what made him who he was today. In The Wanderer the soldier lost his identity due to the death of his lord. The soldier puts himself into exile to try to find a new lord who will be as loyal and rewarding as his last lord. In The Wife’s Lament the wife’s husband leaves her and she was put into exile by her husband’s family. After put into exile the wife ends up on the streets because she has no family there and no way to for the wife to get back to her family. The problems of all the poems are very different but all the problems affected the main characters.

We have all had those memorable moments that send us back in time; a song on the radio, the smell of cookies baking, driving in the car. They make you think of good times passed. But Billy Collins’s poem, “The Lanyard”, is not only a recollection of the past, but a personal insight to about the things his mother has done for him and what he has done in return.

The first poem I analyzed was The Lanyard. The speaker of The lanyard is a boy who tries to offer his lanyard that he made at camp to make up for all the loving care that his mother has gave him in his life. The boy addresses his mother as a very loving mother that has always taken care of him and done what is best for him. He talks up all the great things that his mother has given him and all he can give her is a lanyard. “She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard.” “Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth, and two clear eyes to see the world to read the world with, she whispered, and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.” These lines from the poem are metaphors of not being able to give your mother what she deserves at a young age for all that she has done for you. No matter what you get her it will never scale to the amount to what she has done for you. The humour in this poem is sarcastic in a way because the speaker always

The poems “Introduction to Poetry”, “Poem”, “Poetry Should Ride the Bus”, “How Poetry comes to me”, “How I Discovered Poetry”, and “Making It in Poetry”. These poems express their author’s thoughts on poetry beautifully. Each author gives their own interpretation of what poetry is to them. However, each poem carries small differences and similarities. At the end, each poem has taught its readers a new meaning of poetry.

Reflections Within is a non-traditional stanzaic poem made up of five stanzas containing thirty-four lines that do not form a specific metrical pattern. Rather it is supported by its thematic structure. Each of the five stanzas vary in the amount of lines that each contain. The first stanza is a sestet containing six lines. The same can be observed of the second stanza. The third stanza contains eight lines or an octave. Stanzas four and five are oddly in that their number of lines which are five and nine.

The text proceeds from analyzing each poem individually, and later draws parallels between the two. It tries to answer the questions whether the poems are a call to social irresponsibility, and if the object of the poem, the common man should be scorned or pitied. That the common man who is busy conforming to the norms of the state and the society has lost connection with his natural surroundings evokes sympathy for him. Materialism has subsumed his capacity to think to an extent that he cannot even decide whether he is free to do as he wishes – can he say no to enlisting for war? Or can he hold an opinion that did not coincide with the larger public?

In Behind the Paint Violent J says, “he would dreams or visions of a clown running through the ghetto”, Which led to the name Insane Clown Posse(Bruce). Each vision, six in total portrayed a message in the form of a “Joker’s Card(clowns)” telling him to convince people to change their evil ways before it's too late. When the last Joker’s Card drops its suppose to represent the end of it all. This is called The Dark Carnival mythology. Carnival of Carnage being the first Joker’s Card dropped in 1992, represents the violence in the ghettos as a traveling Carnival and the audience is the upper class who watches the ghetto tear eachother apart.

My main focus will be on the two poems “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and [Because I could not stop for death-] by Emily Dickinson. Even though the poems have two separate tones but there are a lot of similarities. I deliberate that the speakers in both poems change our attitude in different ways with similar meanings. At first glance both of these poems can be hard to understand or even misinterpreted. That can make it difficult to analyze but with more than one interpretation being correct, it shouldn’t be as difficult.

Analysing the two poems of: Island man and Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes and how the poet creates conflict

Often a poet’s greatest work comes from life experiences. This may be partially due to the realness of the experience and the hearer’s ability to relate. This effect of relating to an author can be accomplished with themes and tone of a poem. A poet’s “attitude” can also be expressed through the similes and metaphors that he or she uses. Robert Frost is a poet whose attitude and beliefs about life show through his poems. He has been described as a romantic due to his themes, but that may be inaccurate due to the complexity and depth of his work. With a further understanding of the history of the author a new idea of him may be realized. Robert Frost’s history, lifestyle, and outlook influenced his work; this is shown when he attributes the relationship between man and the universe with alienation, nature, and death.

In the first stanza of “ Where the sidewalk ends,” Silverstein is explaining the scene, with nice descriptive words, “There is a place where the sidewalk ends / and before the street begins, / and there the grass grows soft and white, / and there the sun burns crimson bright, / and there the moon-bird rests from his flight / to cool in the peppermint wind” (1-6). The word choice and descriptive language definitely brought me back to a time when I was younger. Silverstein obviously didn’t follow any set rules, he made it his very own. The place I think he might be talking about is the borderline between night and day, or sun and the moon. It’s the middle of two things that are opposites.

Left Overs I taste so good, my left overs do too… I may have reheated him a time or few, But throw him out right after I’m through, And watch women flock around the trashed stew… He’ll always want to be a part of my steak, And that’s the reason other women hate, On me because they’ll never escape, My left overs still wanting my plate, But to my left overs, these women race, To a meal that has long lost his taste,

Before reading the poems that we were assigned to, I never read too much poetry in my lifetime. I now know that I am missing out, when you really find the meaning behind the short poem, or which may be a long poem, the plot “clicks” in my mind. I chose the three topics based on how much meaning they have to my life, and that the poems that were most interesting to me.

The poet explores the psychology of an anti-social character. He attempts to explain himself but reveals how far removed he is from the “normal” reader. We can sympathise with his viewpoint, but he remains an unpleasant character. The poem contrasts those who make things and those who only destroy them. The thief wants to do things to escape boredom but hasn’t the willpower and self-discipline to do them (like learning the guitar).