Poetry Explication

|Spend about 1 hour on this section. Think carefully about the poems before you write your answer. |

Frost further points out that the stretch of woods being viewed is very rural. This is made possible by the reference to the location between the woods and frozen lake. In closing the final sentence of the second stanza Frost reiterates the fact that this occurs on “the darkest evening of the year” stating the darkness of the mood.

Lorna Dee Cervantes' poem, “Poema para los Californios Muertos” (“Poem for the Dead Californios”), is a commentary on what happened to the original inhabitants of California when California was still Mexico, and an address to the speaker's dead ancestors. Utilizing a unique dynamic, consistently alternating between Spanish and English, Cervantes accurately represents the fear, hatred, and humility experienced by the “Californios” through rhythm, arrangement, tone, and most importantly, through use of language.

Clint Smith is a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. Smith Clint wrote a poem called “Something You should Know.” The poem is about an early job he had in a Petsmart. The poet allows the readers into his personal life, but before he had trouble opening up to people and his work. Moreover, Clint wrote an insight in the poem about relying in anything to feel safe and he says it is the most terrifying thing any person can do.

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

Take a minute to imagine “Men looking like they had been/attacked repeatedly by a succession /of wild animals,” “never/ ending blasted field of corpses,” and “throats half gone, /eyes bleeding, raw meat heaped/ in piles.” These are the vividly, grotesque images Edward Mayes describes to readers in his poem, “University of Iowa Hospital, 1976.” Before even reading the poem, the title gave me a preconceived idea of what the poem might be about. “University of Iowa Hospital, 1976” describes what an extreme version of what I expected the poem to be about. The images I

His poems are considered “wrong” because it goes against the society's sleep-teachings. Sleep-Teaching, or hypnopedia, is learning by hearing while asleep. Citizens were conditioned to learning through the repetition of words and phrases introduced by the government. In the novel, hypnopedia was also used to give moral education and introduce them to their class distinctions. Your class distinction depended on much you were genetically modified while still in a test tube.

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.

After first reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s lyric poem, “If I Should Learn, in Some Quite Casual Way,” one may be taken aback by just how unconcerned the speaker, possibly Millay herself, seems to be with this scenario. Only after going back through the poem a time or two can one understand what Millay truly means. Figures of speech are methodically placed to give the impression that not much effort went into this mere thought.

In life, people undergo many experiences leading them to new questions giving a sense of uncertainty. In Bloom’s prologue to How to Read and Why, he uses Emily Dickinson’s poem “875” in order to further proclaim his thesis. In his essay, Bloom addresses the solitary reader and urges them to read in order to discover and benefit themselves. Reading and gaining more knowledge leads to a more questioning and open mind. It is ironic how the more one reads and the more knowledge they gain, the more aware one is of how much they will never know. Emily Dickinson’s poem is reflective of Bloom's argument because the speaker stepping alone from “plank to plank” cautiously with a “precarious gate” can be compared to the individual reader reading from book to book in order to strengthen themselves, gaining more knowledge and ironically becoming more uncertain.

Poetry can be divided up into different forms, more easily expressing an author’s emotions and intent with their poetry. For analyzing purposes I chose the poems Self-Help by Michael Ryan, Ghazal by Agha Shahid Ali, Psalm 150 by Jericho Brown, and Emergency by Michael Dylan Welch.

In this poem, Edgar brings books to life using personification. Line 1 says, "They have their stratagems too, though they can't move." Edgar brings the main idea in the first line which signifies the power books posses and how they don't

Ted Kooser, the thirteenth Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner, is known for his honest and accessible writing. Kooser’s poem “A Spiral Notebook” was published in 2004, in the book Good Poems for Hard Times, depicting a spiral notebook as something that represents more than its appearance. Through the use of imagery, diction, and structure, Ted Kooser reveals the reality of a spiral notebook to be a canvas of possibilities and goes deeper to portray the increasing complexities in life as we age.

Meaning that we need to try and understand what the author of this poem is trying to tell us. The only thing that I have a huge issue with, is the one thing he is demands that we do. As he is telling all this I am sinking into my seat farther and farther. I try not to completely lose my cool as I freak out that on the inside that my grade in this class is going to tank. And poetry is all to blame.

Often people do not re-evaluate their tradition, values or social norms, pondering whether they need to change. As society and social norms change we have to make some adjustments.