Liam's+Poems

- Naseer Ahmed Nasir

 * =====About refugees who leave their homes with their possessions on their back, and eventually make it to a camp where life is not much better.=====
 * =====My favourite line was near the end when they were described as "Internally displaced and dead" (30) which really showed how unhappy and terrible the people's lives were.=====
 * =====Uneven meter makes the journey through the poem itself feel treacherous and weaving.=====
 * =====I liked the heavy use of the motif of nature near the beginning, which suddenly switched briefly into naming vehicles that attacked the IDPs.=====

- Oscar Wilde

 * =====A very sensitive poem which also relies heavily on the motif of nature.=====
 * =====Although the poem never explicitly mentions a voice, it retells declarations of love which one could imagine to be either said by a voice, or dedication to this voice.=====
 * =====My favorite line was "From the mighty murmuring mystical seas," (20) because it used alliteration incredibly well and made the ocean seem to come to life.=====

- Khalil Gibran

 * =====Another poem which relies on the motif of nature to illustrate its meaning. This meaning is that the speaker would like to live an emotionally pure life, and show a tear and a smile as signs of his sorrow and happiness of living.=====
 * =====The speaker seems to want life to be rich with emotion, and feels that emotions are vital to an understanding of one's self.=====
 * =====I really liked the first two lines: "I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart / For the joys of the multitude" (1-2) because they right away showed the feeling of the speaker that emotions should be pure and personal.=====

- Henry David Thoreau

 * =====The speaker has had enough of reading classical literature, and decides to go outside instead of read more.=====
 * =====Despite being outside in the rain, and getting "drenched" (29), the speaker is very happy to be outside, and seems to feel refreshed.=====
 * =====I like how the raindrops are compared to "crystals" in line 36: this makes the speaker's experience outside seem more valuable, more magical, and more memorable from seeing such beauty in nature.=====

- Pablo Neruda

 * =====The speaker is discussing love, saying that as long as he is loved by the person he is addressing himself to, he will love them in return.=====
 * =====The speaker suggests that he is constantly being led to the one he loves by everything he sees; however, as love is a reciprocal relationship, the other person has to feel this way about him as well.=====
 * =====I liked how the poem was in free verse: the speaker could express himself how he wanted to, and I particularly liked line 36, which consisted solely of the word "But," and put a lot of emphasis on this word to surprise the reader and grasp the reader's attention more tightly.=====

- Philip Larkin

 * =====The speaker is writing to a friend about the "relationships" each has had with women over the years, and how they differ.=====
 * =====The speaker manages to suggest quite dirty things without being overly vulgar or specific, especially through naming places where his friend had sexual intercourse with women.=====
 * =====The speaker seems to think his approach to women is less effective: many of them refuse him for divers reasons.=====
 * =====However, he also seems to suggest that women can be hypocritical in their attitudes towards romantic encounters: they refuse anything but marriage, but "that's all lust" (28). Maybe the speaker just doesn't understand women...=====
 * =====I really liked how the last word, the name "//Horatio"// also had a play on words of "Whore ratio," as the speaker had just been talking about the ratio of women that his friend was able to seduce.=====

- Dennis Cooper

 * =====This poem is about the band ABBA, and talks about drugs, music, language barriers, and a wild lifestyle.=====
 * =====I thought it was interesting how the first line was "We snort all our coke," (1) as right away this told the reader that the people in the poem were crazy and the poem would likely be about doing wild things.=====
 * =====I had trouble figuring out who was actually speaking in the poem, whether it was a band member or a fan. The poem seemed to have been written confusedly, just as a stream of thoughts.=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====By far my favourite poem I've read so far; it talks about waiting outside a factory, then the speaker thinks he sees his brother, but it turns out nt to bem then he thinks about his relationship with his brother.=====
 * =====I like how the poem is written as if it is talking to the reader (e.g. "you think you see your own brother" (10)), it makes the tone seem more intimate.=====
 * =====I also like how the speaker manages to tie the whole poem together even though it is about a whole bunch of different things.=====
 * =====Although I'm not really sure, I got the impression that the speaker ended up referring to emotional work in the poem rather than physical. It seemed like he wanted the reader to figure that out own their own though. At the beginning of the poem he says "You know what work is," (3) but then in the last line he says "you don't know what work is" (42).=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is a poem about a mother's reaction to the fact that her teenage son murdered someone.=====
 * =====It seems, from the title, that the mother is described the day after the murder, when the seriousness of the situation has set in and she is profoundly shocked.=====
 * =====I like how partway through the poem, the speaker suddenly addresses himself to the audience: "Try it awhile, / go ahead, it's not going to kill you" (23-24).=====
 * =====The poem ends with the speaker telling the reader not to "pray for life eternal" (40), showing that the speaker feels that life is not always kind and should not be lived forever.=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====Very unusual, interesting poem. It keeps repeating "Out of" and ends almost every stanza with "They Lion grow." Lion is always capitalized.=====
 * =====I think that "Lion" refers to the huge, rapid industrializing growth which seems to pop up in Levine's work. However, I wasn't entirely sure on the meaning of this poem; it just seemed like a stream of the speaker's thoughts.=====
 * =====I felt that when I was reading this poem, it read sort of like a rap: it had a good rhythm and interesting words and kept repeating the message: "They Lion grow."=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is a poem about the speaker's brother, who was essentially a very bitter and pessimistic person, but about whom the speaker nonetheless thought: "give me back my young brother" (41).=====
 * =====The speaker's brother looked upon the world and thought "You can have it" (44). It is ironic that the "You," referring to God whom the brother despied, is nonetheless capitalized.=====
 * =====I liked the line about how the brother "dies when he sleeps / and sleeps when he rises to face this life" (11-12), as it showed the disconnection between the speaker's brother and his life, and emphasizing his extreme apathy and anger.=====
 * =====I also liked how the speaker talked about how the years when they were in their 20s have not only passed, but were so short it's like they never even existed. This helped me to understand the depression felt by the speaker's brother about life. I also wondered if the brother was an extended metaphor for one facet of the speaker's own personality.=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====Probably the most disturbing Philip Levine poem I've read so far, but also the most emotionally stimulating.=====
 * =====The poem is dedicated to a survivor of Hiroshima, and it is about people talking about a horse, badly burned and injured, searching for the stable-boy. In the end, it said that there had been no horse, which confused me. I wondered if the people talking about it had been crazy because the speaker said of them that: "that the rage had gone out of / their bones in one mad dance" (37-38).=====
 * =====I thought was interesting how the people in the poem talked about the stable-boy having been found killed by the horse. Maybe the horse was their way of explaining all the horrendous things that they saw in the wake of the bomb over Hiroshima.=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is a poem about two young men ("you just might call them boys" (1)), who are relaxing at a street corner waiting for the streetcar.=====
 * =====The men seem very happy and relaxed, and I really liked the characterization of each one:I thought it was interesting how the speaker brought up the topic of brotherly love (which is a common theme in Levine's poems) between the two men, and how even they might not know whether there was brotherly love between them.=====
 * "the one/ in the black jacket he fills to bursting" (8-9), who "seems friendly enough, snapping/ his fingers while he shakes his ass and sings/ "Sweet Lorraine") (10-12)
 * "the one leaning / against the locked door of Ruby's Rib Shack/ the one whose eyelids flutter in time/ with nothing" (13-16).
 * =====I also thought it was interesting how the speaker made the men seem a little bit dirty and sketchy, because they don't have any religion, they breath in "soiled air" (27), and one his shaking his "ass," but nonetheless the speaker finds something fascinating in "the twin bodies they've disguised as filth" (29).=====
 * =====I also thought it was interesting how the speaker made the men seem a little bit dirty and sketchy, because they don't have any religion, they breath in "soiled air" (27), and one his shaking his "ass," but nonetheless the speaker finds something fascinating in "the twin bodies they've disguised as filth" (29).=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This poem is about the speaker's memory of playing in the polluted water with a Polish girl when he was younger.=====
 * =====I liked the lines about being "[baptized] (...) in the brine / of car pars, dead fish, stolen bicycles, / melted snow" (3-5), as it contrasted the purity f the speakers actions with the pollution of their setting.=====
 * =====I also liked how the poem ended with the speaker and the girl going "back where [they] came from" (25), because having noticed how pure and enjoyable the speaker's time by the island was, I felt that that line suggested that one's home was not necessarily where they came from, but where they were happy.=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is a poem about a graveyard, where the speaker expects to soon be resting.=====
 * =====I liked how the speaker described the graveyard as the place where "everything else not human (...) thrives" (13-14). To me, this description did a very good job of showing how unfriendly the cemetery was to people, because the people made it so by designating it as a place for the dead.=====
 * =====Nonetheless, the speaker also describes the graveyard as being overly quite glum as well, as the cat there "refuses to purr" (22).=====
 * =====I liked how, somewhat similarly to in the previous poem, the speaker brings up the ugliness and impurity of the pollution at the cemetery: "dirt, kitty litter, wood ashes," (34).=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is a poem from the point of view of "Edgar Poe" (1); it is presumably dedicated to the late, great Edgar Allan Poe.=====
 * =====This poem talks about the hardship faced by Poe, such as how he says: "The gruel I ate / Kept me alive" (3-4).=====
 * =====I was interested on how the speaker seemed to focus on the negative aspects of his life, such as when he describes himself as: "Edgar the mad one, silly, drunk, unwise," (15).=====
 * =====I also thought it was interesting how he said that he "did not write" (14), and was "on the edge of laughter" (16), and I wonder what the speaker meant by this. Perhaps there is some allusion to Edgar Allan Poe that I am not getting (assuming, of course that this poem is actually about Edgar Allan Poe).=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is an... interesting poem about the speaker's relationship with his sister, which has a fairly strong romantic aspect.=====
 * =====I thought it was interesting that this poem dealt with the relationship between brother and sister, when so many of Levine's poem's deal with relationships between brothers.=====
 * =====I also thought that the speaker was surprisingly willing to share details of his relationship with his sister, such as how he looks at her when "she's still naked from the waist up" (5).=====
 * =====I also thought it was interesting how, at the end of the poem, the speaker says that if the reader thinks that he and his sister don't have a choice about their relationship, then the reader "[hasn't] heard a word" (41). This was interesting to me because the speaker was essentially admitting to choosing to have a romantic relationship with his sister.=====
 * =====In fact, the speaker seems very aware of what the reader must be thinking; at one point he even says: "By now I believe I know / exactly what you're thinking" (32-33)=====
 * =====I also just realized that all this time I was assuming that the speaker was a man. Although it doesn't directly say so anywhere, I still believe that this assumption is true because of the way the speaker talks about his sister getting abused by other men, as well as the romantic element of the speaker's relationship with his sister.=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is a poem which starts out talking about a red-haired woman who is upset about the death of her husband and about "the birth and death / of her own beauty" (4-5). I thought that this metaphor was a very effective way of explaining how she was beautiful because of her husband's perception of her beauty.=====
 * =====This poem also deals with industrialization, as the speaker talks about: "this blond valley of smoke" (17) as well as a crushed oil can in the middle of the road, and being "startled it was not / the usual cat" (31-32). Both of these excerpts, especially the imagery in line 17, do an excellent job of contrasting natural elements with pollution, as was done in //Belle Isle, 1949//.=====
 * =====I also liked how the speaker said "I do not believe in sorrow; / it is not American" (14-15) as I felt that this very effectively showed the perception that the American dream must be obtained or forced upon people, and that pollution and industrialization were necessary to attain this goal regardless of their consequences. I felt that this line also served as a good transition from the previous description of the mourning woman, as it coldly moved away from her sorrow and onto a greater one, that of nature as a whole.=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is a strange, somewhat cruel poem adressed to a child in a barbershop.=====
 * =====I liked this poem because it evoked memories of my childhood fear of being trapped somewhere overnight.=====
 * =====I feel that the speaker was cold and unsympathetic towards the child, such as: "you case / is closed forever, hopeless" (8-9). For some reason, I actually liked that the speaker was somewhat cruel to the child because it made me think that the speaker was the child's thoughts, which in cases like this always think of the worst scenario and increase the child's fear.=====
 * =====The end of the poem is particularly cruel: it says: "You think your life is over? / It's just begun" (27-28). I thought that this was quite a powerful way to end the poem because it suggested that the child would be trapped, in one way or another, for the rest of his or her life.=====

- John Updike

 * ===== This poem is about, unsurprisingly enough, an ex-basketball player; it describes him as a strange combination of a champion and a failure. On the court, "his hands were like wild birds" (18). Off the court, however, "his hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench" (23). =====
 * ===== This poem addresses the issue of how Flick Webb, the ex-basketball player, never really learned anything wen he was younger other than basketball, and so now he has to work in a garage. He seems quite lonely as well: "Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods / beyond her face" (28-29). Therefore this poem characterizes Flick as incredibly lost without the one thing he knows how to do: play basketball. =====
 * ===== I thought it was interesting how objects in the poem are personified: "the ball loved Flick" (16) and "It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though" (24). This made it seem like Flick's only friends were the objects that he could get his hands on, and Flick's only real strength is his athletic ability. =====

- Diane Di Prima

 * ===== A poem which seems to be about the speaker and someone else that she is intimate with thinking wistfully about Earth, a planet they have come to to try to "make golden" (6) =====
 * ===== The contrasts Earth's ugliness with the beauty visible from it; she refers to Earth as a "sullen and dingy place" (6), while also referring to the view of the sky as: "a tangled tapestry" (19) =====
 * ===== The last line: "a madness, or a beginning?" (30) reflects the monotony of Earth which seems unorganized to the speaker, while also showing the Earth's potential for growth and development in a spiritual sense. =====

- Anthony Hecht

 * ===== This poem was full of biblical references, and repeatedly brought up the ass that "Jesus rode" (3). The word ass also has a double-entendre throughout the poem of meaning posterior, giving it a much more insulting sense, especially when the speaker says: "That man is but an ass / Who smells not his own stink" (32-33) =====
 * ===== Mathematics is not brought up directly as a field in the poem; however, it seems that any criticism towards mathematics would be in the fact that the speaker may consider it to ba an "abstract style" (34). =====
 * ===== This poem at times seems disdainful towards mankind, which "struggles to describe / Our rich, contingent, and substantial world" (25-26). Therefore, we can see that mathematics may also be criticized in its effectiveness through the descriptions of the world as having profound meaning behind its workings. Therefore, math could never hope to be any good in helping to truly understand the world. =====

- Robert Fernandez

 * ===== An incredibly vivid poem describing in detail the motion of a wave; to me this poem highlights beauty in nature. =====
 * ===== The speaker balances casual, poetic, and scientific language beautifully: " The passage of cups does not limit / the range of potential outcomes, / and yet at no point does the wave / dissolve into abstraction" (11-14). To me, this balance of different registers of language reflect how the wave shows many aspects of beauty and all these aspects come together harmoniously.=====
 * =====In addition, the repetitive nature of the wave is shown when, near the end of the poem, the speaker mentions a wave which "lifts from the sea floor" (25). The motion of lifting made me think that this was a whole new wave, showing how each wave is preceded and followed by another wave, which is just as beautiful.=====

- Meghan O'Rourke

 * ===== This poem is about raising and training a horse. However, the use of the more emotionally distant word "invent" reflects the fact that the horse's "mind that does not know love" (24). =====
 * ===== This poem did an effective job of creating sadness at the distance between trainer and horse; contrary to many poems and stories of this type, the speaker says that there is no mutual emotional bond between a human and an "animal mind" (25). =====
 * ===== The horse is described, essentially, as an object: " a muzzle and two black eyes" (29). This imagery again makes the horse seem more emotionally distant, and something that the human, despite and his or her hard work and love, will never be able to connect with on a spiritual or emotional level.=====

- Joanne Kyger

 * =====This is a poem about the speaker's former attitude towards social norms and standing.=====
 * =====It has some aspects of surrealism, especially its hard to grasp metaphors: "I fly out / from under the belly."=====
 * =====Its shape also contributes to confusion, and reflects the speaker's disjointed search for truth.=====
 * =====I liked the combination of metaphor and imagery of: "Life's dizzy crown / of whirling lights, circles this head" as it reflected the author's confusion and gave an explanation that was both easy to see and easy to understand.=====

-Philip Levine

 * =====This poem is written from the point of view of a pig; it is very different from all the other Levine poems I had read in that it does not deal with poverty, progress, or family relationships (yes, sorry, I decided to go back to Levine for this one).=====
 * =====This poem is interesting because the pig considers himself to be a well made machine: "It’s wonderful how I jog / on four honed-down ivory toes." In addition, the pig describes his own forthcoming murder rather calmly, despite its unpleasantness and gruesomeness: "I can smell / the blade that opens the hole (...) shake out the intestines / like a hankie."=====
 * =====The pig's attitude, combined with the poem title, suggest that Levine is drawing attention to our insensitive attitude towards animals; we take them for granted and we use and kill them for our own benefit.=====

- Susan Howe

 * =====This is a poem about nature; it starts out with very short lines which suddenly become longer.=====
 * =====This poem seems as if the speaker is just rattling off the thoughts and memories that she has; this is especially true due to the short lines in which the speaker lists different things.=====
 * =====The poem ends with the speaker giving the metaphor of cabbage gardens being "summer's elegy" (or at least it seems like it). This seems like the speaker is expressing the thought that she knows that blooming cabbages mark the end of the summer and all of the wonderful aspects of nature that she experienced during this time.=====

- Tony Hoagland

 * =====This poem is about a woman going outside early in the morning to put up a windchime, because she heard "the wind blowing / through the sound the windchime / wasn't making."=====
 * =====Some parts of this poem are seem technical: "she's trying to figure out / how to switch #1 with #3," while other seem more casual and traditionally poetic: "the little kissable mouth / with the nail in it." This contrast reminds the reader both of the inconvenience and of the cuteness of the task.=====
 * =====I liked how the woman needed the windchime to be up; for some reason it made me think of a daycare I used to attend, due to the setting of a (I'm assuming) farmhouse with a cozy family atmosphere.=====

- Jorge Evans

 * =====This is a poem about city workers, who work "for the overtime." It specifically talks about the tough life and harsh conditions faced by the workers, and the tit;e and aforementioned line hint at their low pay and necessity to work long. hard shifts to be able to support themselves and their families.=====
 * =====The long lines without break are representative of the long, hard working conditions faced by the workers.=====
 * =====I liked the lines: "We’re piled on back / of a flatbed with our tools, our tiredness." This metaphor described very effectively how the exhaustion was just as much a part of the job, and the identity, as the tools were.=====

- Kay Ryan

 * =====I quite liked this poem; it talks about nature and the formation of thoughts as we witness "a blast"=====
 * =====The short, enjambed lines create a sort of rush through the poem full of imagery and changes in what is being described. This allows the reader to experience the formation of their own thoughts "as fast as possible."=====

- Edgar Allan Poe

 * =====This poem recounts the long journey of a solitary knight as he seeks the legendary city of Eldorado.=====
 * =====Throughout the course of this poem, the knight progresses from "gallant" to one "whose strength / failed him at length." The decay of this knight's strength is also ironic considering he is moving closer to a city of renowned vibrance and grandeur.=====
 * =====The repeated metaphors involving the word "shadow" (over the knight's heart, the peasant whom he asks for directions, the valley he must travel through) also contrast greatly with the brightness of the city. These examples of irony also suggest that in the soldier's quest he is moving further from the truth and will never arrive at his destination.=====

- Andrei Codrescu

 * =====This poem is about French working mules, who are personified and described as having a culture and distinct thoughts. The speaker in this poem is one of these mules.=====
 * =====I thought it was interesting how the speaker talked about how the mules had no TV to provide them with "news of the ends of mules / elsewhere in the Middle East / and West." This made me think that the mules may have been symbols for people who work hard but are poor and misinformed about the rest of the world.=====
 * =====I liked how the poem talked about how stoic the mules were: "we just nod and understand." This contributed to the contrast between the mules' outer appearance of monotonous hard work and the inner thoughts expressed in this poem which have a much greater variety and are quite interesting.=====

- David Ferry

 * =====This poem describes a man and a woman sitting at a table, as witnesses from the opposite side of a window.=====
 * =====There is a heavy emphasis on colours; this is likely because the speaker has no sound to describe due to the window and therefore puts more focus into what he sees. Even "The air is green;" this colour serves not only as a description of the predominant colour in the room, but also contributes to the silence, as if the couple were sitting in a fish tank, as these are often green in colour.=====
 * =====Nonetheless, the poem also contains beautiful elements of its description. For example, the woman's skin is compared to "standing milk," and even the bruise on her arm is described as "Flowering in the white."=====

- Peter Gizzi

 * =====This poem is written somewhat in the form of a will; however it is interspersed with many personal thoughts from the speaker.=====
 * =====My favorite line was: "12. I send love and weapons to everyone possessed with night visions." This, to me, summed up the entire tone of the poem as it was both professional and whimsical. It expressed the speaker's inner emotions in a creative and unique manner.=====
 * =====The last line of the poem, "28. To mercy I leave whatever," also struck me as interesting, because of the fact that throughout the poem the speaker had seemed sympathetic towards others, and even merciful (such as in the line mentioned above).=====

- Bill Berkson

 * =====This is a poem describing the month of October and the changes it brings, both physical and emotional.=====
 * =====The contrast in the poem: "it is not only cold, it is warm," "Why do I think October is beautiful? / It is not, is not beautiful," emphasize the contrast between warm and cold, between green and orange leaves, and other stark contrasts brought on by October and the change from summer to fall.=====
 * =====Furthermore, the speaker describes the "real October" (someone's face) as having "transparence and the stone / of your words as they pass, as I do not hear them." This therefore suggests that October is a time that is cold not only physically but also emotionally, as the "words" mentioned seem harsh and are not heard by the speaker.=====

- Vicki Hearne

 * =====This is a poem which questions truth and meaning in what people say.=====
 * =====This theme is addressed at the very beginning of the poem, as the speaker asks: "Must we mean what we say? Stick to it."=====
 * =====This question is answered somewhat ironically, as although the poet finishes by answering the question posed above with:"//You must be told// (...) //what you meant to say//" the speaker also digresses into much metaphor and is not at all concise throughout the course of the poem.=====
 * =====The much-sed metaphor of the horse and rider throughout the course of this poem gave me the impression that speech, to the speaker, was a journey in search of truth, which was not always straight ahead.=====

- Philip Levine

 * =====This is a poem about the speaker's brother, and how he interpreted the world.=====
 * =====I liked how the speaker used a rhetorical question that seemed to reflect society's views, but then followed it up with an honest answer in order to make the question seem foolish and ignorant: "How much can matter to a kid / of seven? Everything."=====
 * =====This poem's asyndeton, listing many places that the brother imagined he visited, creates a sense of constant adventure, without breaks or reprieve, to suit the brother's creative and adventurous spirit.=====

- Gerald Vizenor

 * =====This poem describes the speaker's experience on the beach at "san gregorio."=====
 * =====The poem describes the beach using a mixture of roughness and beauty, reflecting the characteristics of the sand, the ocean, and where they meet. Smooth/beautiful: "silent pools / raise my faces." Harsh: "blood, bone, stone / turn natural."=====
 * =====The short lines and the shape they made together made me think of the wet marks that waves leave on the beach on a calm morning. Therefore, this poem allwed me to more easily visualize the elements described in this poem through many forms of imagery.=====

- Arthur Symons

 * =====This was one of the first rhyming poem's I've read in quite while. It describes the speaker and someone else who the speaker loves exploring London at night.=====
 * =====The regular stanza pattern and rhyme scheme helps to make this poem seem more like the speaker's "cleansing, entrancing" experience.=====
 * =====The speaker contrasts the wonder and beauty of London with its uglier, darker aspects: "Through the tumultuous night in London / In the miraculous April weather."=====

- Yusef Komunyakaa

 * =====This poem describes the speaker's visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. From the brief flashbacks and visions described by the speaker: "I see the booby trap's white flash", it can be assumed that he was in the Vietnam War as well.=====
 * =====I liked how the speaker made it seem as if he was an object, and a part of the memorial:This poem seems to represent some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder as well, as the speaker is still very shaken by his experiences: "I said I wouldn't / dammit: No tears."=====
 * "My black face fades, / hiding inside the black granite / (...) I'm stone. I'm flesh"
 * "His pale eyes / look through mine. I'm a window."

- Hailey Leithauser

 * =====This poem describes a hot summer night and its effect on nature.=====
 * =====I liked the enjambment between lines and stanzas; it made me pause in my reading then continue quickly. The words came in waves, much like the heat of a fever.=====
 * =====I also liked how the poem both began and ended with references to heat ("The heat so peaked tonight" --> "the whitened ashes from the coal"), but gave a description of nature in between. This made me, the reader, drift off in my thoughts, like a hallucination, then be brought back to the unpleasant reality of the heat.=====

- Stephen Edgar

 * =====This poem was about the "Menger Sponge," a mathematical idea about an originally cube-shaped figure with infinite surface area and zero volume. Being somewhat of a mathematician, I found this fascinating.=====
 * =====I liked how the poem opened with vivid imagery of nature: "A spider web, head-high, adorning / The woodshed’s entrance like a sheet." I found that opnening hte poem in this way made the reader connect mathematics with nature, and thus find the "Menger Sponge" more beautiful and natural, rather than foreign and inaccessible, when it was introduced later. In fact, the spider web was directly compared to the Menger Sponge, making its complex and beautiful aspects more recognizable to the reader.=====
 * =====I also liked how the speaker called the Menger Sponge "the mathematician's / Monstrous idea" when it was first introduced. I thought that this negative description, after the beautiful introduction of the poem, also made the reader want to read on to understand this sudden switch in tone.=====
 * =====Finally, I thought that the opening quote of the poem by Paul Valéry: "// God made everything out of nothing; but the nothing shows through" // was very fitting and made the reader think about the concept of invisible beauty before even hearing the poem's speaker discuss it.=====

- Bill Berkson

 * =====This poem describes the passage of time in an urban environment.=====
 * =====I liked how the vaguely sexual similes ("succumbing to a disorderly shelf life like Tampax in June") gave the city more life in the otherwise bleak descriptions ("Can there be a way to redefine the tense behind its jaunts(...)?")=====
 * =====I liked how the title of the poem suggested that the passage of time seems like a routine tradition, but is in fact very powerful and interesting, as it takes its toll on everything " I haven’t remembered anything, only the names / and that their dates have been replaced by fees / toted up out of mischief."=====

- W.S. Graham

 * =====This poem describes the speaker's experiences exploring the streets of London late at night.=====
 * =====I thought it was interesting how the speaker compared the city to a watch at the end of the poem ("I sat like a flea crouched / In the stopped works of a watch"). To me, this simile implied that London had a very distinct routine, and that the only reprieve from this routine was at night.=====
 * =====I felt that the specific allusions to the parts and the people of London, especially in the 3rd and 4th stanzas, convinced the reader that the speaker knew London very well, and therefore that the speaker's opinion of London could be trusted.=====

- Amrita Pritam

 * =====This is an incredibly depressing poem about how, when the speaker and her significant other split up, they sold the house but while they were emptying it, a street dog wandered in. Then, the dog's dead body was found in the house a few days later.=====
 * =====I thought it was interesting how, at the end of the poem, the speaker shows the strength of her memories by using the rank scent of the street dog's dead body: "I smell that odor—it gets to me from so many things . . ."=====
 * =====I also thought it was interesting that the death of the street dog seemed to represent the definitive end to the speaker and her husband's relationship, seeing as they both leave their formerly shared house, and leaving nothing behind but death.=====

- Dean Young

 * =====This poem gives very abstract life advice to the reader. My personal favorite example of the speakers words of wisdom: "The heart of a scarecrow isn't geometrical." (Wizard of Oz reference?)=====
 * =====I also liked how the poem started out with some advice that at least made some sense: "Avoid adjectives of scale. / Dandelion broth instead of duck soup," then gradually progressed to advice that was far more bizarre and often didn't even qualify as advice, just random words: "Moonlight has its own befuddlements."=====
 * =====I thought the last few lines were interesting; the speaker said the best gift he ever received was made of twigs, so it "didn't matter which way it broke." This suggested that change is inevitable, and not to dwell on things breaking/changing/leaving etc...=====

- Dean Young

 * =====This poem talks about fog, especially thick fog, and how it serves as a companion to the speaker.=====
 * =====I liked how the speaker said that he liked "fog with fog behind it" as opposed to thin fog that could be seen through. This made me think about how the speaker enjoyed solitude.=====
 * =====However, despite the speaker liking solitude, the fog also keeps him company: "My dog is fog and I don't have to scoop / its poop with my hand in a plastic bag." Therefore, the fog is metaphorically compared to a dog to show how it is man's best friend in the eyes of the speaker. (Is there a word for personnification but where it becomes an animal rather than a human?)=====
 * =====I also liked how the fog seemed to be pointing at something important ("There, there, says the fog"); however, the speaker is not able to see it ("You can't see a thing"), suggesting that fog both helps the narrator by keeping him company and holds him back from finding truth in life, as he wanders aimlessly in the fog. The fog may be an extended metaphor for the mindset of being content without a distinct goal in life.=====

- Sherwin Bitsui

 * =====This poem describes a river, but very indirectly as it is full of metaphor, simile, and imagery not pertaining directly to a river.=====
 * =====I liked how the poem starts "When we river." Using "river" as a verb helped to convey the important part of the river in the speaker's life, as it is not just something he sees, it is part of what he does.=====
 * =====I also liked how the river was described with imagery, especially that pertaining to the human body. This also helped to convey the message that the river was alive and had an active role in the speaker's life:=====
 * "its blood vessels stiffen and spear the drenched coat of flies / collecting outside the jaw."


 * ====="hack its veins, / divert its course"=====
 * =====I was curious as the why the river was described as having "the illusion of a broken back." Perhaps this shows that in reality it is incredibly strong despite its seemingly casual, lazy, meandering path.=====

- Sherman Alexie

 * =====This poem talks about how both the speaker and his mother forgot that the speaker's father had been dead for over a year.=====
 * =====This poem was a response to the poem "Love Calls Use to the Things of This World," by Richard Wilbur=====
 * =====This poem was incredibly powerful; the fact that both people forgot about the death (he calls his mother and asks to "talk to Poppa," she says she made him coffe that morning) drove home the title's idea that grief and mourning makes us truly understand the value of a person's life.=====
 * =====The casual language contributed the the fact that grief helped to celebrate the person's life while also accepting that their life was over forever: "Those angels burden and unbalance us / (...) And haul us, prey and praying, into dust."=====

- Robin Robertson

 * =====This is a poem about a cat "brought in from outside" which tries and fails to climb a chair, and becomes embarrassed by its failure. In the eyes of the reader, the cat's embarrassment and shame turn it human.=====
 * =====I liked how the entire first half (first stanza) of the play describes how weak decrepit the cat looked through metaphor and imagery:This poem was both sad and hopeful; although it was very depressing that the cat was in such rough shape that it couldn't "climb to his chair," it is also hopeful because it point's to the cat's intelligence through the cat's human-like reaction of being ashamed of failing to climb the chair, and avoiding eye contact afterwards.=====
 * "A figment, a thumbed / maquette of a cat."
 * "his sour body / lumped like a bean-bag"

- Elise Paschen

 * =====Thie poem describes many different animals, mainly birds, flying around "under the dome."=====
 * =====It seemed as if the dome might be a zoo. The speaker also seems to feel that the animals will be safer and/or happier there, advising them to stay under the dome.=====
 * =====The dome may also be a magnifying glass, suggesting that the animals are dead. I think that this is actually the case in this poem as it talks about how scientists study and deify animals "under the dome."=====

- Joanne Burns

 * ===== This poem describes a woman who likes to collect books and loves the thought of reading them, but never does so. =====
 * ===== This poem may be satirizing those people who do not read but like to think of themselves as cultured (reminded me of Gatsby's library). =====
 * ===== This poem may also be just describing the woman in the poem who is mystified by books but does not dare open one. =====
 * ===== This poem may be written in prose to mimic the foreboding, dense challenge that a book presents. =====

- Brian Henry

 * =====This poem describes different rooms that the reader ha been in and experiences.=====
 * =====The rooms are described in brief flashes of intense imagery: "Rooms with walls of white blocks," "TThe room where you were walked in on/ The room where you were the walker."=====
 * =====The brief flashes of imagery combined with the sexually suggestive descriptions give this poem a primal feel, and hurries the reader through it without time to appreciate the poem, justas the reader doesn't take the time to think about the rooms that he or she has been in.=====

- Brian Henry

 * =====This poem plays upon the word "burnished" and experiments with different meanings of the word "limb" as applied to both furniture and the human body.=====
 * =====This poem also uses a lot of imagery: "The skin has been burned / beyond the human, & then beyond."=====
 * =====This poem was very uncomfortable to read, as it repeats itself a lot in order to emphasize the words "burned" and "skin."=====
 * =====I'm not quite sure what this poem is supposed to mean; however it seems to personify furniture and also present painful tactile imagery to the reader."=====

- Samuel Daniel

 * =====This poem talks about shadows, both literally and as a metaphor for intangible, fleeting emotions.=====
 * =====The writer plays with the visual imagery of light and dark as a way of expressing the contrast between, and ease of change, of many emotions and perceptions: “Glory is most bright and gay / In a flash, and so away.”=====
 * =====The writer seems to be saying that although perception may seem important, what really affects us is how we remember something: “When your eyes have done their part, / Thought must length it in the heart.”=====

- William Byrd

 * =====This poem is a long list of pieces of advice, many of which start with the word “care.”=====
 * =====This poem has a steady alternating rhyme scheme in each stanza followed by a pair of rhyming lines. It is also written in iambic pentameter, and for a Renaissance poem had fairly easy/common language. This gave the poem an easy to read, sing-song feel which helped make the experience of reading it smoother and more enjoyable.=====
 * =====The poem ends with the lines: “Care in such sort that thou be sure of this:/ Care keep thee not from heaven and heavenly bliss.” This ending seems to suggest that the advice in the poem has a religious and moral value, lending meaning to the poem and hopefully persuading the reader to take the advice given in the poem seriously.=====

- Charlotte Mew

 * =====This poem talks about how we do not always want a city with "golden streets" and constant splendour; sometimes we yearn for a more calm city with "some remote and quiet stair."=====
 * =====The regular rhyme scheme and meter of this poem gives it a soothing, calm feel much like the calm city being asked for.=====
 * =====This poem seems to be saying that constant riches are overrated, and that more basic pleasures such as solitude and calm are underappreciated.=====

- Margaret Walker

 * =====This poem is for Malcom X, and starts addressing all those he touched. I thought it was interesting and brave of the poet to address both the good and the bad in this audience, from "violated ones with gentle hearts" to "Halting white devils and black bourgeoisie."=====
 * =====I also liked that the words of Malcom X were described as "sandpapering," showing both their harsh but purifying qualities, much like the descriptions in this poem.=====
 * This poem had a very spiritual feel to it, and how the last two lines, which were questions, ""When and Where will another come to take your holy place? / Old man mumbling in his dotage, crying child, unborn?" reflected the fear, confusion, and insecurity that many felt after Malcolm X's assassination.

59) The Gatekeeper's Children - Philip Levine
 * This poem describes a house "of the very rich" where children are digging flowerbeds in the backyard.
 * There seems to be some sort of satire of tradition and values, because despite the luxury of the house, the children wait to be called in for "remnants of meals." In addition, the speaker pokes fun at the proverb that children are meant to be seen but not heard by pointing ou their isolation and how "No one can see / Them, even thought children are meant / To be seen."
 * Although I didn't quite understand the meaning of the poem, the image created, of seven children digging for no one in the flowerbed behind a magnificent house, was very interesting. I wondered if the children were digging as a gift for the "gatekeeper" (who doesn't exist) or if it was forced labour.

60) Blasting from Heaven - Philip Levine
 * This poem describes a family which seems to struggle but make its way.
 * I like how the poem started off with describing a seemingly unimportant, everyday affair; a mother coaxing her child to eat, then gradually became more intense and serious as it described the mother's struggle, her husband, still out working or drinking, and her "Negro" servant.
 * The husband is apparently out "trying to get it." I wondered was "it" represented; it seemed like something negative, except that his wife said that she hoped he obtained it. I think "it " represented money, though; it is both the source of and the solution to the family's problems, and it would make sense given the last words: "the day is sold."
 * The military references in the poem (e.g. "drinking beer at attention") point out the rigid monotony of the family's life.

61) Snowshoe to Otter Creek - Stacie Cassarino
 * This is a fairly depressing poem that reads like a stream of consciousness; the speaker revisits experiences that he regrets.
 * The line "there is no single moment of loss" seems to summarize the entire poem; it is a series of thoughts and events all reflecting the loss of a woman "two Februaries gone."
 * The questions at the end of the poem do not seem rhetorical and therefore reflect the speaker's sense of confusion and loss.

62) This Ecstacy - Chard Deniord
 * This poem describes the speaker's admiration of a French girl, and his imagination of the adventures that they could have together.
 * I liked how this poem started off with fairly literal, normal descriptions "you're swishing your skirt," then progressed into more and more fantastical imagery "I'd be flying with the quickness / of a humming bird and the grace of a heron," only to finally bring the reader back to the present by describing a calm scene involving the speaker and the girl "walking hand in hand."
 * The first two lines "It's not paradise I'm looking for / but the naming I hardly gave a thought to" remind me of Romeo and Juliet's "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet" (approximate quote). Therefore, the speaker seems to be carefree and honest in his perception of what he wants; he desires happiness, regardless of what it is called.

63) Mother Carey's Hen - David Yezzi 64) Never Mind - Dorothea Tanning
 * This poem contrast's te speaker's perspective of life with that of a petrel, a seafaring bird.
 * I liked the ocean-related imagery in this poem: "I crash, folded seaward."
 * This poem seemed strangely titled; however, after some research I was able to deduce that "Mother Carey's Hen" is the name of a specific kind of petrel.
 * This poem showed the speaker's admiration of the petrel, which "rises up, adapting to the shape / of each impediment."
 * Imagery relating to waves was used to illustrate both the speaker's and the petrel's approach to problems; the petrel is much more agile and adaptable.
 * This poem was a series of vividly described images that the speaker noticed and remembered, my favorite of these images being: "the toaster / Eating my toast."
 * This poem opens with "Never mind the pins / And needles I am on. / Let all the other instruments / Of torture have their way." This implies that the speaker is in pain, and perhaps suggests that the rest of the poem is delusions brought on by this pain.
 * This poem also has a lot of seemingly random questions, such as "Did you gasp on seeing what / The mailman just brought?"
 * Overall, it seems that these thoughts are likely pain-induced delusions as the speaker seems to be going on irrelevant tangents interspersed with tactile imagery: "air-conditioners / Freeze my coffee."

65) Goats - Eugenio De Andrade
 * This poem describes goats and the speaker's lifelong love and fascination with them.
 * The elegance of the goats is contrasted with the ugliness of their surroundings: "Wherever the earth is crag and scrub, the goats are there-- the black ones, girlishly skipping, leaping their little leaps from rock to rock."
 * The goat is described as the speaker's first horse and, loosely, as his first love: "I could almost say she was my first woman." This quote, although somewhat bizarre, reflects the care and affection that the speaker showed towards his goat.

66) Fish Fry Daughter - Sara Ries
 * This poem describes how the speaker's father was late for the birth of the speaker because he was frying fish as a cook in a restaurant.
 * The speaker mentions how her father spoke openly to her boyfriend as they were both cooks. This further reveals the importance the father placed on his jobs as a short-order cook.
 * I couldn't tell whether the tone of the poem was bitter and angry that the speaker's father put so much importance on the fish he was cooking, but it seems not to be the case because the speaker says: "I hope when Dad first held me / it was with haddock-scented hands." The speaker seems to be fascinated with her father's obsession with cooking and remember it fondly.

67) Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll
 * This poem describes a knight slaying the Jabberwock, a feared beast.
 * This poem uses a lot of made-up words ("'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;").
 * These words are used in order to take advantage of onomatopoeia and allow the reader's mind to create images based on the sounds created by these words.
 * It is interesting that despite the large concentration of made-up words, the reader can still easily follow the story as its general plot is well-known and the made-up words used suggest the image taht the speaker is trying to convey (e.g. "galumphing" implies a triumphant, pompous method of travelling: "He left it dead, and with its head / He went galumphing back.").

68) The Kite - Judith Beveridge
 * This poem is told from the point of view of a monk watching a boy masterfully fly his kite.
 * I liked how the the boy kept calm when lightning began to strike in the distance; it emphasized his youthful carelessness as well as his confidence in his kite-flying abilities.
 * In the end, the monk realizes that no matter what he/she says to the boy about the way a monk lives, it will sound artificial. To me, this emphasized the boy's self-control and reflection while flying his kite, as the monk, who strives to achieve these thins, feels "illusry" when talking to the boy about them.

69) Lucky - Dorothea Tanning
 * This poem is about the speaker's sister, who was essentially a hypochondriac who compulsively shewed on and ate her own hair.
 * This poem describes the sister's habit as well as her getting a surgery, presumably because eating her own hair made her sick (hair can't be digested).
 * At the end of the poem, the sister is described as "lucky" because the doctor "found nothing." However, although "incisions heal," the sister still seems compulsive and anxious as the poem closes with "Me, eating my hair."
 * Therefore it seems that hte surgery did nothing to convince the sister that she was going to be all right, and she is still a hypochondriac.

70) The Owl and the Pussy-Cat - Edward Lear
 * This is a whimsical poem about an owl and a pussy-cat who travel at sea to a distant land, then get married thanks to a pig who sells them a ring, and a turkey who performs the ceremony.
 * This poem has a regular, sing-song rhyme scheme and repetition; this gives it the air of a children's nursery rhyme (further research confirms that this poem was indeed written for a three-year-old).
 * This poem ends happily, which was a nice change after many of the more serious poems that i have read. The tone of this poem is carefree, whimsical, and joyous.

71) Blues for Alice - Clark Coolidge
 * This poem is a long-smooth flowing poem; its form is similar to that of the journey it describes: long, relentless, yes full of excitement.
 * The poem is a long run-on sentence enhancing its free-flowing, restless feel. In addition, it doesn't end with any sort of punctuation; this lack of closure leaves room for continuation of the ideas of the poem in the reader's mind.
 * I was very curious about many of the lines of the poem, such as "To meet a care is to dial redeem." Lines such as this don't quite make sense, but nonetheless use optimistic words such as "care" and "redeem," and therefore leave room for the creation and interpretation of positive thoughts in the reader's mind.

72) Fragment - Thomas Hardy
 * This poem is about the bodies in a catacomb, who are described by the speaker as patiently waiting for God due to their strong faith.
 * I really liked the line which describes the bodies: "motion past, were nevertheless not dead." This line suggests that the people who had lived in these bodies were still alive in the sense that their faith" was eternal.
 * This poem seemed to praise the faith of those whose bodies were in the catacombs, but also satirize their eternal faith which clearly had not actually kept them alive: "Everyone's waiting, waiting it seems to me."
 * "What are you waiting for so long? - / What is to happen?" The speaker is unconvinced of the effictiveness of the people's prayers.

73) Alteration Finds - Geoffrey Brock
 * This poem is told by the speaker to someone he loves, or at least used to love.
 * The poem is split into three parts, which signify a different time period or aspect of the relationship between the speaker and the destinary of the poem.
 * I thought it was interesting and ironic how the last section of the poem seemed the happiest (e.g. "On the golden sand we traced / you name beside the sea") yet it also point out how flawed the relationship really was without much explanation: "How full of sex and song, / of spirit and song -- how wrong!"

74) Clean - Jeff Vande Zande [DISCLAIMER]: This was by far the most depressing poem I've read for this journal, and it really ruined my night. Please don't read it.
 * This poem was about a father who is giving his daughter a bath, and goes to pour himself a drink of scotch. When he returns, his daughter is drowned in the bathtub.
 * The title of this poem is really darkly ironic, because the title of the poem ("Clean") suggests a successful bath, whereas although the daughter does become clean, she is pale and dead.
 * The last lines of the poem: "He tries to keep her / in the tub, in the light. / He's on his knees" are just horribly horribly depressing, especially given that the father is suddenly confronted with this horrible scene and his wife doesn't know yet."

75) I Too Have Been to Candyland - Anthony Madrid
 * This poem seems to be a criticism of conventional thinking, which is done largely through imagery.
 * I really liked the opening two lines: " I TOO have been to Candyland, but I found myself missing the death cult. / I missed the spectacle of the wounded bones being opened and instrumented."
 * The tone of these lines seemed to suggest that although the speaker had experienced so-called happiness, he does not agree with it and desires unconventional things. The intensity of the contrast between "candyland" and a "death cult" serves to emphasize the discrepancy between the speaker's idea of happiness and that of the rest of society.
 * The phrase: "your head packed full of cotton" further suggests the speaker's disdain towards and disagreement with modern, conventional thinking.

76) A Blind Fisherman - Stanley Moss
 * This poem is about the speaker's blind friend, a fisherman who was very wise.
 * The fisherman's words involved a lot of imagery. This supported his wisdom as he was able to "see" without using his eyes (e.g. "in the overcast and sunlight of my mind.") THe motif of light and dark is especially used to symbolize wisdom vs ignorance.
 * The poem ends abruptly by describing the fisherman's lack of grace and his death. The abrupt change to describing the less diginified aspects of the old fisherman ("he died where he fell") add a sudden sadness and disappointment to the poem, and remind the reader that nothing is permanent.

77) Poets at Lunch - Stanley Moss
 * This poem describes the speaker's desire to live life to the fullest.
 * The opening stanza (which is very long) is my favorite, as it shows how the poet has learned to appreciate the "last" of anything, as "last leaves no time to hesitate." Therefore, the poet would rather live than have one more "last sleep," as there is no going back from the last of anything.
 * I liked the title of the poem, which seemed casual and therefore hinted at the persistent deep thoughts in a poet's mind. The poet seems to suggest that for him, at least, lunch and other daily occurrences are still full of introspection and deep though.

78) After the Winter - Claude McKay
 * This poem consists of the speaker's words to someone else about what they will do when "the trees have shed their leaves."
 * The poem is made up of idyllic promises: "We will seek the quiet hill, / Where towers the cotton tree (...) And we will build a cottage there."
 * The last line of the poem ("And ferns that never fade") gives a sense of permanence, contrasting with the cyclic nature of seasons suggested by the title. Therefore, it is possible that the writer of this poem is hinting that the speaker's promises will never come true.

79) Coming of the August Grandchild - Brandon Shimoda
 * This poem describes the link between humans and nature.
 * There is a lot of repetition (e.g. "the males, and the men of the males"), lending to the clarity of the poem. The insistence on certain details through repetition gives the poem an organic feel as the important elements (man and nature) are already emphasized for the reader, and are explained clearly.
 * I think the speaker of this poem is meant to be an indigenous person; this is suggested through both the insistence on the link between man and nature and the empathy with indigenous people: "Indigenes displaced by indigenes displaced."

80) A Song - Lizette Woodworth Reese
 * This poem describes the speaker losing their loved one.
 * This poem personnifies Love and Grief in order to show their changing positions in the speaker's life as well as to emphasize their importance: "but Grief stayed on, / And in Love's empty chair."
 * The regular meter of the poem as well as its regular rhyme scheme lends a sing-song feel to this poem which allows it to read more smoothly and tell an easier to read story.

81) Of Late - George Starbuck
 * This poem is about Norman Morrison, who famously committed suicide by burning himself to death.
 * This poem shows a lot of repetition, each time introducing Morrison as "Norman Morrison, Quaker, of Baltimore, Maryland." This repetition emphasizes the importance of Morrison's identity and how he will not be forgotten to the speaker.
 * This poem also focuses on the media's reaction to Morrison's suicide; although he presumably killed himself for a cause, they just see him as another story: "Reporters got cracking furiously on the mental disturbance angle / So far nothing turns up." The reporters don't actually care about Morrison as a person, or whether he was disturbed; they just need to sell stories.

82) April - Alicia Ostriker
 * This poem is split into three stanzas, each with a different speaker: an old woman, a tulip, and a dog.
 * Each speaker reflects on the futility of life, and seems to show a sort of wisdom and understanding that comes with age.
 * Old woman: "The optimists among us / Taking heart because it's spring (...) I envy them."
 * Tulip: "The seasons go round they / go round and around."
 * Dog: "How gratifying the cellos of the river."
 * Each speaker seems to value relaxation and meditation, and has learned not to rely on "signing e-mail petitions" or, in the dog's case, "pissing" on a tree, to bring them satisfaction in life.

83) Mending Wall - Robert Frost
 * This poem describes the speaker's interaction with another man, and revolves heavily around the phrase "Good fences make good neighbours."
 * This poem has a motif of separation; it talks a lot about walls, fences, etc...
 * This poem is long and has no breaks; it is very unrelenting and has no cracks, much like a wall itself.

84) I Don't Miss It - Tracy K. Smith
 * This poem recalls the speaker's memory of the past, while also comparing in to the present.
 * The first word of the poem is "but," which makes it seem as though something was preceding this poem and furthering the link between past and present.
 * This poem is made up largely of imagery (e.g. "Filtering its way through shapeless cloud"); however, it is not always related to what comes before and after, and this creates a sense of disjointedness.

85) For the Old Gnostics - Robert Bly
 * This poem discusses religion, as well as its goal of making people stronger.
 * The poem deals largely with myth and legend, in order to create an atmosphere of ancient, majestic events: "Dragons copulate with their knobbly tails."
 * However, this poem seems to point out that religion is futile as it provides an empty promise: "The untempered soul grumbles in empty light."

86) Sci-Fi - Tracy K. Smith
 * This poem describes the future, and the idealistic goals it promises which might not always be positive when reflected upon critically.
 * i liked when the speaker said "the word //sun// will have been re-assigned / To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device." These lines to me reflected the epitome of futuristic promises of better technology, while also reflecting the trade-off due to the lack of natural, beautiful sunlight.
 * The last line "And for all, scrutable and safe" reflects both the promise of a better, safer, more developed world, while also reflecting the lack of freedom and constant, constricting flow of information. This lack of freedom and individuality is also reflected by the lines "Women will still be women, but / The distinction will be empty."

87) Marblehead - Rebecca Lindenberg
 * This poem is told by the speaker to someone she is in a relationship with; I regret to say love because the opening quote suggests the love was "lousy."
 * This poem has a motif of food and taste, such as when it talks about using "honey to unbitter the lime" (and the relationship), and when it focuses on the green colour of the olives, possibly reflecting envy.
 * The title "Marblehead" implies hard-headedness and helps to explain why the relationship is dysfuncitonal.

88) The Cafe Filtre - Paul Blackburn
 * This poem describes a man who eats a meal, then feeds the leftovers to his cat.
 * The poem is segmented and the lines are jagged back and forth across the page. This lends a disjointed, confused feeling to the poem despite the fact that the story makes sense and is in chronological order.
 * The man's love for his cat his shown by his joking words to her: "I've already given you one piece of steak, / what do you want from me now? Love?" The poem's intimacy is helped by the 3rd person speaker, who shows no bias and allows the man's actions to speak for themself in terms of showing his fond feelings for the cat.

89) May - Karen Volkman
 * This poem is full of imagery which seems to describe someone dying.
 * I liked the mix of technical terms: "radius, ulna" with more abstract, creative imagery: "you blanch black lurk and blood the pallid bone."
 * This poem seems almost disdainful in tone towards the dying: "What do you think / you're hunting, cat-mouth creeling / in the mouseless dawn?"

90) Spring - Gerard Manley Hopkins
 * This poem describes the beauty of spring.
 * The poem has a regular alternating rhyme scheme, which lends a sing-song quality to the poem and makes it sound like a children's song.
 * The first description of spring's beauty, describing "weeds, in wheels, shoot[ing[ long, lovely, and lush" shows how beauty can be found in all aspects of spring, not just the stereotypical ones.

91) Call it Music - Philip Levine
 * This poem talks about the speaker's friend who died unexpectedly.
 * This poem focuses on several different scenes in the friend's life, such as when he was helped upstairs to his bed when he was drunk. Each scene is very brief, but described vividly.
 * There is also a lot of enjambment.
 * The combination of these features makes the poem seem like a series of interconnected memories which have blurred together, and reveal the great impact the friend had on the speaker's life.

92) Dirge in the Woods - George Meredith
 * This poem describes a silent moment in a forest.
 * The layout of this poem is fairly normal, though some short lines such as "And below" are indented. This lends a swaying shape to the poem which made me think of a tree being blown by the wind.
 * This poem seems very literal, i.e. just describing the forest, until the last few lines, when the speaker describes how "we drop like fruits of the tree / Even we, / Even so." These lines lend a sense of finality to the poem, and remind us that nothing, not us nor the forest, lasts forever.

93) In the Museum of Lost Objects - Rebecca Lindenberg
 * This poem describes materialism and the tendency to collect objects to form a memory.
 * The first line, "You'll find labels describing what is gone" suggests the importance that people place on missing items, which ironic given that the memory of them and their significance still remains.
 * This poem is opened with a quote from Ezra Pound: "// What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee; // // / //// What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage." This suggests that when something is important, we remember it for its value not for its material presence. //

94) Terminus - Ralph Waldo Emerson
 * This poem uses many motifs: travel, the body, nature, all of which seem to point towards the theme of progress.
 * This poem uses an irregular rhyme scheme which, although it lends structure to the poem, also makes it unpredictable.
 * The last few lines of the poem are separated from the rest, and the speaker begins to talk in the first person ("I trim myself to the storm of time.") This gives the poem a sense of intimacy as well as finality as the speaker introduces himself to definitively bring the poem to a close with the lines "The port, well worth the cruise, is near,/ And every wave is charmed." Therefore, the metaphorical ship is nearing the dock and the journey comes to its close.

95) rotten oasis - Judith Goldman
 * This poem is a series of seemingly random thoughts addressed directly to the reader.
 * There is a lot of enjambment in the poem, which increases its pace, and there is also a focus by the speaker on "the King of France."
 * This poem seems to delve into the perception of self-importance, with its repetition that "Nobody is a king of France." In addition, when the speaker says things like "I spoke to your exoskeleton" and "your stunt double" it made me think of the outward persona we try to show compared to who we really are.

96) The Universe as Primal Scream - Tracy K. Smith
 * This poem describes the speaker hearing two children screaming upstairs.
 * I liked the line where the speaker cynically wondered if the children's mother was proud of "the four pink lungs she nursed" which were producing such a loud noise.
 * This poem expands the significance of the scream to represent the vibrant life of the entire universe "if this [heaven] is what / Their cries are cocked toward" before again reducing it to a shrill shriek resounding throughout the apartment building, just a part of everyday life: "All of it is just a hiccough against what may never / Come for us."

97) SIlence - Billy Collins
 * This poem focuses on specific moments of resounding silence.
 * These moments seem to be very brief, and are contrasted with the loud, violent sounds that precede and follow them, for example: "the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child."
 * Almost every line of this poem has the word "silence." Ironically, its repetition makes it stick out more in the reader's mind and seem louder each time, which also parallels the theme of resounding, all-encompassing silence within the poem.

98) Black Mare - Lynda Hull
 * This poem is very deceptive, because it was not about darkly-coloured horses. I was very disappointed.
 * This poem is actually about a hotel in which the speaker sits forlornly.
 * the last part-line of the poem: "the world shuddering with trains," represents the inherent instability of the world that the speaker alludes to throughout the poem.
 * The motif of trains seems to represent, progress, leaving something behind, and an outdated method of transportation: "Of all that, there's nothing left but a grid / Of shadows the El tracks throw over the street."

99) Unromantic Love - J. V. Cunningham
 * This poem is about an insincere or unsuccessful relationship.
 * The poem uses an ABBA rhyme scheme, which makes it sound a little bit like a nursery rhyme.
 * The first piece of imagery: "There is no stillness in this wood" made me think of a broken sort of tranquility, where both people in the relationship were constantly, tensely on edge due to the lack of trust.
 * The extended metaphor of using a forest to describe the relationship was effective as it gave a lot of opportunity for imagery as mentioned above, which also presenting the image of something natural which could easily be disturbed by outside, unnatural influences, much like a relationship.