Adrian+Cheng

Adrian Cheng Poetry Journal 2012

My old poems can be found here.

More to come later! 
 * 1 ||  Ghazal 270, "ask not" ||  Hafiz, translated by Shahriar Shahriari  ||  In Ghazal 270, Hafiz repeats the words "ask not" as an anaphora in order to emphasize the sincerity of his love as in the line, "Ask not what sorrows for love I endure." The structure of the poem is largely composed of rhyming couplets, but some lines deviate from this structure. The rhyming couplets link connecting ideas of the last couple of wards of a preceding line to the next, as in the rhyme, "lost and unsure" and "high and pure". These two phrases are in stark contrast to each other but also complement each other.  ||
 * 2 ||  Us Against the World ||  Chris Martin  ||  Martin portrays the despair he felt at the loss of a loved one's as a hole that the light of the day "lift off this blindfold", and all the water of the ocean, "and bring back the water", cannot fill. Martin alludes to the biblical story of Daniel in the Lion's den to describe his hope that after this trial of depression, things can be better. Martin compares the chaos of the world to a storm and how it has torn apart his relationship. He longs to be at the eye of the storm so that he may be reunited with his lover in a less chaotic world.  ||
 * 3 ||  It was not Death ||  Emily Dickinson  ||  Dickinson compares the feeling of despair to harsh physical conditions such as death, night, frost, and fire, and asserts that despair was not like any of them, rather, it was like all of them. The second stanza's contrast between frost and fire portrays the feeling of despair to range from the two extremes of hot and cold.  ||
 * 4 ||  Phenomenal Woman ||  Maya Angelou  ||  A free form poem celebrating women who believe in themselves. The pace of the poem is fast, and the lines are short, creating an air of confidence in the speaker.  ||
 * 5 ||  Still I Rise ||  Maya Angelou  ||  The poem begins with a 4 line stanza, ABCB structure but at the end, dissolves into free verse. Angelou's rhetorical questions such as "does my sassiness upset you?" directly engages her audience and creates a rebellious, playful tone. Although the speaker is addressing men who degrade women, the poet is also addressing women to stand up for themselves.  ||
 * 6 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> If you Forget Me || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Pablo Neruda  || In this poem, Neruda expresses the two way nature of love through imagery of nature. He describes objects that complement each other such as logs and fire, wind and banners, boats and islands as a comparison of him and his lover. When he and his lover both feel strongly about each other, they synergize like fire and wood. ||
 * 7 || Dreams || Langston Hughes || In this short 8 line poem, Hughes, suggests that dreams are the essence of life using a matter of fact tone and cutting imagery. The two powerful images of a broken-winged bird and a barren field frozen with snow aptly describe what life is to him without dreams. The even structure of the poem (4 words per line; 3/5 for the last two) and ABCBADED rhyme scheme convey one cohesive idea. ||
 * 8 || Annabel Lee || Edgar Allen Poe || Poe compares the everlasting sea to his love of Annabel Lee, connecting the two ideas by repeatedly rhyming sea and lee. He claims that the neither divine nor satanic powers could ever destroy his love for her and that the powers of nature "for the moon never beams", although responsible for her death only strengthen his love for her. The tone of the speaker is not regret, anger or sad as might be expected in dealing with the loss of a loved one, but determination in preserving his love of Annabel Lee. ||
 * 9 || Entirely || Louise MacNeice || Entirely comments on the uncertainty of life. The poem is split into three stanzas which explore different aspects of this idea. The abstract imagery, eg. "twigs of song", "splash of words" "a prism of delight and pain" highlight the uncertainty brought by the unknown by juxtaposing distinctly human feature s of speech and language with nature. The inability of humans to understand nature is further highlighted by the speaker in the following lines, "that by a stroke of luck we can appropriate even a phrase entirely." The poem continues to explore the uncertainty of the unknown in the following stanzas, of love and of human reason. ||
 * 10 || The Outcast || Lord Tennyson || Although it is clear that the speaker is addressing his reluctance in understanding his father, the exact subject of his ranting is quite murky. The title of the poem, The Outcast, gives little more insight on the reason speaker choses to examine his father's life. The extended metaphor of the speaker exploring his father's secrets as if he would explore a countryside forest ruin, or otherwise exotic "groves" and "hills' and abandoned "halls", would suggest that the speaker had never really understood his father and that his father was some kind of recluse. However, he does treat the exploration respectfully, as he describes it as "groves" and "halls" both locations that would command intimacy and respect. In the end, he expresses regret at not having known his father better. ||
 * 11 || Burial of a fisherman in Hydra || Grace Schulman || The poem glorifies the death of a common fisherman its allusions to the catholic church giving it more significance than a death of a fisherman is normally warranted in modern times. However, the fisherman is treated like a hero, given a lavish funeral ceremony and the respect of silence. The speaker knows however, that in truth, fishermen are not treated as heroes, but instead likens the event as transient as the passing day. ||
 * 12 || Anthem for Doomed Youth || Wilfred Owen || Anthem for Doomed Youth is a sonnet about the atrocities faced by the young soldiers who participated in world war 1. The men are described as being slaughtered like cattle, mindlessly, all for another man's gain. Also, Owen compares the funeral process of the soldiers who had died in the field to the funeral process of men who had died in times of peace. This juxtaposition between the 'choirs' and 'bells' of the church and the 'choir' of artillery shells paints a stark image of the death of many men whose lives were as unfulfilled as their funerals. ||
 * 13 || If || Rudyard Kipling || If discusses the values that a man should adhere to in order to be a man. The speaker addresses in his son in four stanzas of the values of belief in yourself, restraint in ambition, strength of will in the face of despair, and in achieving power while maintaining humility. The strong ABABCDCD rhyme scheme emphasizes the points that the speaker is making within the poem and unifies the poem as a whole rather than separate ideas addressed within each stanza. The triple auto rhyme of 'you' in the first stanza stress the speakers intensity in addressing his son. ||
 * 14 || I do not love you except because I love you || Pablo Neruda || This sonnet discusses the irrational nature of love. In the first section of the sonnet, lines 1-4, the speaker's tone is rather reflective and relatively devoid of emotion. He relates his experience with love in a matter of fact tone illustrating the fact that he does not fully understand his experience with love. The strong repetition of 'you', at least twice in every line, "I hate you deeply, and hating you//bend to you," creates an agitated tone, and shows that the speaker is perhaps tired of all the uncertainty expressed in the firs stanza and needs a definite answer to his question of whether he loves the subject of the poem or not. ||
 * 15 || I know why the caged bird sings || Maya Angelou || Throughout the poem, Angelou compares a wild bird with a caged one and wonders why the caged bird sings so beautifully while the free bird does not. The first stanzas' description of a wide free world that the free bird lives in is juxtaposed with the confined environment that the caged bird is described in. The poem continues to alternate between descriptions of the free bird and the caged bird in order to emphasize the contrast between each; the free bird does not waste his time singing of beauty when he can experience beauty whereas the caged bird sings beautifully of beauty but can never experience it. The free bird is described through positive, beautiful imagery like, 'dawn-bright lawn' while the caged bird is described with harsh, dark imagery such as, "his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream'. ||
 * 16 || A Dream within a Dream || Edgar Allan Poe || In this poem, the speaker argues that nothing in life can truly be lost, because memories are merely dreams within the dream of life itself. In the first stanza, the speaker seems to be adamant in this assertion "all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream", but in the second stanza, he doubts himself, writing in the same words, but with the word 'is' transposed to the beginning of the sentence to form a question. This clever repetition destroys the assertive tone of the speaker and introduces a glimmer of doubt within the speaker's mind whether the world is actually a dream within a dream or not and whether he will lose his precious memories. The sands are a clear reference to the sands of time, in this case, his memories, which is a apparently having trouble retaining. ||
 * 17 || Fire and Ice || Robert Frost || In this short poem, Robert Frost is wondering what human attribute will eventually be the cause of our downfall, our boundless desire or our capacity for hate. In it, he specifically symbolizes fire as desire and ice as hate, creating an interesting juxtaposition between two opposite human emotions illustrating the point that too much 'good' may be just as bad as too much 'evil' ||
 * 18 || Invictus || William Ernest Henley || Invictus addresses the judgment of souls that the dead must go through in order to reach paradise. The determined tone of the speaker illustrates the confidence in his soul and the way he has conducted himself throughout his life to guide his soul. This confidence further emphasized by his lofty attitude towards the difficulty in attaining salvation and the consequences of Hell as illustrated by these allusions, 'beyond this place of wrath and tears//looms but the Horror of the shade' and 'it matters not how strait the gate'. ||
 * 19 || Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening || Robert Frost || The speaker's content tone is betrayed by the last two lines of the poem which is a single line repeated, 'and miles to go before I sleep'. The poet writes about a the speaker taking a short break in a long journey to admire the beauty of the land around him. The even ABAA rhyme scheme contributes to the content tone of the speaker by connecting the ideas of each line to the next. The rhyme scheme is only broken at the end of the poem, where as mentioned before, the speaker acknowledges that he must move on. ||
 * 20 || As I grew Older || Langston Hughes || The speaker's reflective and anguished tone convey his frustration at having his dream, which is symbolized by the sun, covered by fate and expectations, which is symbolized by a dark wall. The structure of the poem, the varying line lengths follow the pace of the speaker's fragmented thoughts. The pace of the poem slows as the number of syllables in each line decreases and increases as the amount of syllables increases. ||
 * 21 || Television || Roald Dahl || The speaker is of the poem is distinctly the poet himself, expressing outrage at the invasion of the television set into the lives of young children. He emphasizes his point with the full capitalization of entire words and even entire lines. As this technique is rather informal and uncommon, it also creates humor of the biting kind, that is so effective in illustrating Dahl's point that the TV is worse than useless, that it corrupts a child's brain. Dahl also is careful to write in fragments and short lines, a technique more common in illustrated children's books than found in poetry. Thus, the audience of Dahl's rant are not only adults, but also the children who are the victims of TV. ||
 * 22 || Don't Go Far off || Pablo Neruda || The unifying structural technique in this sonnet is the repetition of "don't go far off, not even for a day, because" where the poet substitutes day for hour and then second, creating an increasing sense of urgency. The technique also emphasizes abstract sense of time that the speaker feels, where a second away from the subject creates a feeling of death. ||
 * 23 || Alone || Edgar Allan Poe || Poe describes the beauty of his lonely childhood through hyperboles and metaphors. The rhyming couplets create a flowing effect throughout the poem, giving the poem a thoughtful and wondering tone. The nature imagery emphasizes that beauty can be found not only in companionship but also in nature. ||
 * 24 || Did not go Gentle into that Good Night || Dylan Thomas || Dylan Thomas' Poem repeats two lines " rage, rage against the dying of the light." and "do not go gentle into that good night" at the end of alternating stanzas. The rhyme scheme of ABA unifies the stanzas, which address the coming of the 'good night' which is a symbol of death. And finally, the last stanza breaks from the structure of the poem, where the speaker of the poem addresses his father. ||
 * 25 || Warning || Jenny Joseph || Joseph addresses the social expectations that prevent adults from acting as free as they want to. The red hat is a symbol of rebellious behavior that the speaker wants to engage in but can not afford to as a middle aged adult. She wonders at the freedom that elders have because the social consequences of acting strange and rebellious are not as dire as they are for adults. ||
 * 26 || Hope is the thing with feathers || Emily Dickinson || Dickinson proposes through a metaphor that hope is like a tune that can be heard across the world, ethereal, but always present. Dickinson's choice in starting lines 2-6 with 'and' creates a wondrous tone of respect and awe of the power of this 'thing with feathers' by listing all the characteristics of hope that the speaker is so in awe. ||
 * 27 || Do not Stand at my grave and weep || Mary Elizabeth Frye || Rrye addresses the question of what happens when humans die in the poem Do not stand at my grave and weep. The speaker of the poem is the soul of a person who has passed away. The poet suggests that when a person dies, they become a part of nature through the speaker's repetition of "I am" followed by an imagery of nature. This structure emphasizes the fact that the soul became a part of the entire world and is not entombed in some coffin. ||
 * 28 || Mother to Son || Langston Hughes || Hughes uses a staircase as a metaphor for life. The speaker of the poem is a mother who is a telling her child to never give up. The poem lists all the hardship that a man might face in life through metaphors of "splinters, tacks, torn up boards, and places with no carpet on the floor" in order to emphasize that life isn't easy and that "life for me ain't been no crystal stair". The speaker's tone is encouraging rather than admonishing, creating a hopeful mood. ||
 * 29 || The Lesson || Roger McGough || The rhythm of the poem is created by the consistent alternating 8 syllable 7 syllable lines. The flowing, iambic rhythm is juxtaposed with the dark content of the poem, which involves a teacher killing his kids, creating a comical mood. The cliché imagery 'first come, first severed' and '"it struck with deadly aim" also contributed to the sarcastic tone. ||
 * 30 ||  ||   ||   ||
 * 1 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Ghazal 270, "ask not" || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Hafiz, translated by Shahriar Shahriari  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> In Ghazal 270, Hafiz repeats the words "ask not" as an anaphora in order to emphasize the sincerity of his love as in the line, "Ask not what sorrows for love I endure." The structure of the poem is largely composed of rhyming couplets, but some lines deviate from this structure. The rhyming couplets link connecting ideas of the last couple of wards of a preceding line to the next, as in the rhyme, "lost and unsure" and "high and pure". These two phrases are in stark contrast to each other but also complement each other.  ||
 * 2 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Us Against the World || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Chris Martin  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Martin portrays the despair he felt at the loss of a loved one's as a hole that the light of the day "lift off this blindfold", and all the water of the ocean, "and bring back the water", cannot fill. Martin alludes to the biblical story of Daniel in the Lion's den to describe his hope that after this trial of depression, things can be better. Martin compares the chaos of the world to a storm and how it has torn apart his relationship. He longs to be at the eye of the storm so that he may be reunited with his lover in a less chaotic world.  ||
 * 3 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> It was not Death || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Emily Dickinson  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Dickinson compares the feeling of despair to harsh physical conditions such as death, night, frost, and fire, and asserts that despair was not like any of them, rather, it was like all of them. The second stanza's contrast between frost and fire portrays the feeling of despair to range from the two extremes of hot and cold.  ||
 * 4 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Phenomenal Woman || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Maya Angelou  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> A free form poem celebrating women who believe in themselves. The pace of the poem is fast, and the lines are short, creating an air of confidence in the speaker.  ||
 * 5 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Still I Rise || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Maya Angelou  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> The poem begins with a 4 line stanza, ABCB structure but at the end, dissolves into free verse. Angelou's rhetorical questions such as "does my sassiness upset you?" directly engages her audience and creates a rebellious, playful tone. Although the speaker is addressing men who degrade women, the poet is also addressing women to stand up for themselves.  ||
 * 6 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> If you Forget Me || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Pablo Neruda  || In this poem, Neruda expresses the two way nature of love through imagery of nature. He describes objects that complement each other such as logs and fire, wind and banners, boats and islands as a comparison of him and his lover. When he and his lover both feel strongly about each other, they synergize like fire and wood. ||
 * 7 || Dreams || Langston Hughes || In this short 8 line poem, Hughes, suggests that dreams are the essence of life using a matter of fact tone and cutting imagery. The two powerful images of a broken-winged bird and a barren field frozen with snow aptly describe what life is to him without dreams. The even structure of the poem (4 words per line; 3/5 for the last two) and ABCBADED rhyme scheme convey one cohesive idea. ||
 * 8 || Annabel Lee || Edgar Allen Poe || Poe compares the everlasting sea to his love of Annabel Lee, connecting the two ideas by repeatedly rhyming sea and lee. He claims that the neither divine nor satanic powers could ever destroy his love for her and that the powers of nature "for the moon never beams", although responsible for her death only strengthen his love for her. The tone of the speaker is not regret, anger or sad as might be expected in dealing with the loss of a loved one, but determination in preserving his love of Annabel Lee. ||
 * 9 || Entirely || Louise MacNeice || Entirely comments on the uncertainty of life. The poem is split into three stanzas which explore different aspects of this idea. The abstract imagery, eg. "twigs of song", "splash of words" "a prism of delight and pain" highlight the uncertainty brought by the unknown by juxtaposing distinctly human feature s of speech and language with nature. The inability of humans to understand nature is further highlighted by the speaker in the following lines, "that by a stroke of luck we can appropriate even a phrase entirely." The poem continues to explore the uncertainty of the unknown in the following stanzas, of love and of human reason. ||
 * 10 || The Outcast || Lord Tennyson || Although it is clear that the speaker is addressing his reluctance in understanding his father, the exact subject of his ranting is quite murky. The title of the poem, The Outcast, gives little more insight on the reason speaker choses to examine his father's life. The extended metaphor of the speaker exploring his father's secrets as if he would explore a countryside forest ruin, or otherwise exotic "groves" and "hills' and abandoned "halls", would suggest that the speaker had never really understood his father and that his father was some kind of recluse. However, he does treat the exploration respectfully, as he describes it as "groves" and "halls" both locations that would command intimacy and respect. In the end, he expresses regret at not having known his father better. ||
 * 11 || Burial of a fisherman in Hydra || Grace Schulman || The poem glorifies the death of a common fisherman its allusions to the catholic church giving it more significance than a death of a fisherman is normally warranted in modern times. However, the fisherman is treated like a hero, given a lavish funeral ceremony and the respect of silence. The speaker knows however, that in truth, fishermen are not treated as heroes, but instead likens the event as transient as the passing day. ||
 * 12 || Anthem for Doomed Youth || Wilfred Owen || Anthem for Doomed Youth is a sonnet about the atrocities faced by the young soldiers who participated in world war 1. The men are described as being slaughtered like cattle, mindlessly, all for another man's gain. Also, Owen compares the funeral process of the soldiers who had died in the field to the funeral process of men who had died in times of peace. This juxtaposition between the 'choirs' and 'bells' of the church and the 'choir' of artillery shells paints a stark image of the death of many men whose lives were as unfulfilled as their funerals. ||
 * 13 || If || Rudyard Kipling || If discusses the values that a man should adhere to in order to be a man. The speaker addresses in his son in four stanzas of the values of belief in yourself, restraint in ambition, strength of will in the face of despair, and in achieving power while maintaining humility. The strong ABABCDCD rhyme scheme emphasizes the points that the speaker is making within the poem and unifies the poem as a whole rather than separate ideas addressed within each stanza. The triple auto rhyme of 'you' in the first stanza stress the speakers intensity in addressing his son. ||
 * 14 || I do not love you except because I love you || Pablo Neruda || This sonnet discusses the irrational nature of love. In the first section of the sonnet, lines 1-4, the speaker's tone is rather reflective and relatively devoid of emotion. He relates his experience with love in a matter of fact tone illustrating the fact that he does not fully understand his experience with love. The strong repetition of 'you', at least twice in every line, "I hate you deeply, and hating you//bend to you," creates an agitated tone, and shows that the speaker is perhaps tired of all the uncertainty expressed in the firs stanza and needs a definite answer to his question of whether he loves the subject of the poem or not. ||
 * 15 || I know why the caged bird sings || Maya Angelou || Throughout the poem, Angelou compares a wild bird with a caged one and wonders why the caged bird sings so beautifully while the free bird does not. The first stanzas' description of a wide free world that the free bird lives in is juxtaposed with the confined environment that the caged bird is described in. The poem continues to alternate between descriptions of the free bird and the caged bird in order to emphasize the contrast between each; the free bird does not waste his time singing of beauty when he can experience beauty whereas the caged bird sings beautifully of beauty but can never experience it. The free bird is described through positive, beautiful imagery like, 'dawn-bright lawn' while the caged bird is described with harsh, dark imagery such as, "his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream'. ||
 * 16 || A Dream within a Dream || Edgar Allan Poe || In this poem, the speaker argues that nothing in life can truly be lost, because memories are merely dreams within the dream of life itself. In the first stanza, the speaker seems to be adamant in this assertion "all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream", but in the second stanza, he doubts himself, writing in the same words, but with the word 'is' transposed to the beginning of the sentence to form a question. This clever repetition destroys the assertive tone of the speaker and introduces a glimmer of doubt within the speaker's mind whether the world is actually a dream within a dream or not and whether he will lose his precious memories. The sands are a clear reference to the sands of time, in this case, his memories, which is a apparently having trouble retaining. ||
 * 17 || Fire and Ice || Robert Frost || In this short poem, Robert Frost is wondering what human attribute will eventually be the cause of our downfall, our boundless desire or our capacity for hate. In it, he specifically symbolizes fire as desire and ice as hate, creating an interesting juxtaposition between two opposite human emotions illustrating the point that too much 'good' may be just as bad as too much 'evil' ||
 * 18 || Invictus || William Ernest Henley || Invictus addresses the judgment of souls that the dead must go through in order to reach paradise. The determined tone of the speaker illustrates the confidence in his soul and the way he has conducted himself throughout his life to guide his soul. This confidence further emphasized by his lofty attitude towards the difficulty in attaining salvation and the consequences of Hell as illustrated by these allusions, 'beyond this place of wrath and tears//looms but the Horror of the shade' and 'it matters not how strait the gate'. ||
 * 19 || Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening || Robert Frost || The speaker's content tone is betrayed by the last two lines of the poem which is a single line repeated, 'and miles to go before I sleep'. The poet writes about a the speaker taking a short break in a long journey to admire the beauty of the land around him. The even ABAA rhyme scheme contributes to the content tone of the speaker by connecting the ideas of each line to the next. The rhyme scheme is only broken at the end of the poem, where as mentioned before, the speaker acknowledges that he must move on. ||
 * 20 || As I grew Older || Langston Hughes || The speaker's reflective and anguished tone convey his frustration at having his dream, which is symbolized by the sun, covered by fate and expectations, which is symbolized by a dark wall. The structure of the poem, the varying line lengths follow the pace of the speaker's fragmented thoughts. The pace of the poem slows as the number of syllables in each line decreases and increases as the amount of syllables increases. ||
 * 21 || Television || Roald Dahl || The speaker is of the poem is distinctly the poet himself, expressing outrage at the invasion of the television set into the lives of young children. He emphasizes his point with the full capitalization of entire words and even entire lines. As this technique is rather informal and uncommon, it also creates humor of the biting kind, that is so effective in illustrating Dahl's point that the TV is worse than useless, that it corrupts a child's brain. Dahl also is careful to write in fragments and short lines, a technique more common in illustrated children's books than found in poetry. Thus, the audience of Dahl's rant are not only adults, but also the children who are the victims of TV. ||
 * 22 || Don't Go Far off || Pablo Neruda || The unifying structural technique in this sonnet is the repetition of "don't go far off, not even for a day, because" where the poet substitutes day for hour and then second, creating an increasing sense of urgency. The technique also emphasizes abstract sense of time that the speaker feels, where a second away from the subject creates a feeling of death. ||
 * 23 || Alone || Edgar Allan Poe || Poe describes the beauty of his lonely childhood through hyperboles and metaphors. The rhyming couplets create a flowing effect throughout the poem, giving the poem a thoughtful and wondering tone. The nature imagery emphasizes that beauty can be found not only in companionship but also in nature. ||
 * 24 || Did not go Gentle into that Good Night || Dylan Thomas || Dylan Thomas' Poem repeats two lines " rage, rage against the dying of the light." and "do not go gentle into that good night" at the end of alternating stanzas. The rhyme scheme of ABA unifies the stanzas, which address the coming of the 'good night' which is a symbol of death. And finally, the last stanza breaks from the structure of the poem, where the speaker of the poem addresses his father. ||
 * 25 || Warning || Jenny Joseph || Joseph addresses the social expectations that prevent adults from acting as free as they want to. The red hat is a symbol of rebellious behavior that the speaker wants to engage in but can not afford to as a middle aged adult. She wonders at the freedom that elders have because the social consequences of acting strange and rebellious are not as dire as they are for adults. ||
 * 26 || Hope is the thing with feathers || Emily Dickinson || Dickinson proposes through a metaphor that hope is like a tune that can be heard across the world, ethereal, but always present. Dickinson's choice in starting lines 2-6 with 'and' creates a wondrous tone of respect and awe of the power of this 'thing with feathers' by listing all the characteristics of hope that the speaker is so in awe. ||
 * 27 || Do not Stand at my grave and weep || Mary Elizabeth Frye || Rrye addresses the question of what happens when humans die in the poem Do not stand at my grave and weep. The speaker of the poem is the soul of a person who has passed away. The poet suggests that when a person dies, they become a part of nature through the speaker's repetition of "I am" followed by an imagery of nature. This structure emphasizes the fact that the soul became a part of the entire world and is not entombed in some coffin. ||
 * 28 || Mother to Son || Langston Hughes || Hughes uses a staircase as a metaphor for life. The speaker of the poem is a mother who is a telling her child to never give up. The poem lists all the hardship that a man might face in life through metaphors of "splinters, tacks, torn up boards, and places with no carpet on the floor" in order to emphasize that life isn't easy and that "life for me ain't been no crystal stair". The speaker's tone is encouraging rather than admonishing, creating a hopeful mood. ||
 * 29 || The Lesson || Roger McGough || The rhythm of the poem is created by the consistent alternating 8 syllable 7 syllable lines. The flowing, iambic rhythm is juxtaposed with the dark content of the poem, which involves a teacher killing his kids, creating a comical mood. The cliché imagery 'first come, first severed' and '"it struck with deadly aim" also contributed to the sarcastic tone. ||
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 * 1 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Ghazal 270, "ask not" || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Hafiz, translated by Shahriar Shahriari  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> In Ghazal 270, Hafiz repeats the words "ask not" as an anaphora in order to emphasize the sincerity of his love as in the line, "Ask not what sorrows for love I endure." The structure of the poem is largely composed of rhyming couplets, but some lines deviate from this structure. The rhyming couplets link connecting ideas of the last couple of wards of a preceding line to the next, as in the rhyme, "lost and unsure" and "high and pure". These two phrases are in stark contrast to each other but also complement each other.  ||
 * 2 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Us Against the World || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Chris Martin  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Martin portrays the despair he felt at the loss of a loved one's as a hole that the light of the day "lift off this blindfold", and all the water of the ocean, "and bring back the water", cannot fill. Martin alludes to the biblical story of Daniel in the Lion's den to describe his hope that after this trial of depression, things can be better. Martin compares the chaos of the world to a storm and how it has torn apart his relationship. He longs to be at the eye of the storm so that he may be reunited with his lover in a less chaotic world.  ||
 * 3 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> It was not Death || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Emily Dickinson  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Dickinson compares the feeling of despair to harsh physical conditions such as death, night, frost, and fire, and asserts that despair was not like any of them, rather, it was like all of them. The second stanza's contrast between frost and fire portrays the feeling of despair to range from the two extremes of hot and cold.  ||
 * 4 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Phenomenal Woman || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Maya Angelou  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> A free form poem celebrating women who believe in themselves. The pace of the poem is fast, and the lines are short, creating an air of confidence in the speaker.  ||
 * 5 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Still I Rise || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Maya Angelou  || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> The poem begins with a 4 line stanza, ABCB structure but at the end, dissolves into free verse. Angelou's rhetorical questions such as "does my sassiness upset you?" directly engages her audience and creates a rebellious, playful tone. Although the speaker is addressing men who degrade women, the poet is also addressing women to stand up for themselves.  ||
 * 6 || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> If you Forget Me || <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"> Pablo Neruda  || In this poem, Neruda expresses the two way nature of love through imagery of nature. He describes objects that complement each other such as logs and fire, wind and banners, boats and islands as a comparison of him and his lover. When he and his lover both feel strongly about each other, they synergize like fire and wood. ||
 * 7 || Dreams || Langston Hughes || In this short 8 line poem, Hughes, suggests that dreams are the essence of life using a matter of fact tone and cutting imagery. The two powerful images of a broken-winged bird and a barren field frozen with snow aptly describe what life is to him without dreams. The even structure of the poem (4 words per line; 3/5 for the last two) and ABCBADED rhyme scheme convey one cohesive idea. ||
 * 8 || Annabel Lee || Edgar Allen Poe || Poe compares the everlasting sea to his love of Annabel Lee, connecting the two ideas by repeatedly rhyming sea and lee. He claims that the neither divine nor satanic powers could ever destroy his love for her and that the powers of nature "for the moon never beams", although responsible for her death only strengthen his love for her. The tone of the speaker is not regret, anger or sad as might be expected in dealing with the loss of a loved one, but determination in preserving his love of Annabel Lee. ||
 * 9 || Entirely || Louise MacNeice || Entirely comments on the uncertainty of life. The poem is split into three stanzas which explore different aspects of this idea. The abstract imagery, eg. "twigs of song", "splash of words" "a prism of delight and pain" highlight the uncertainty brought by the unknown by juxtaposing distinctly human feature s of speech and language with nature. The inability of humans to understand nature is further highlighted by the speaker in the following lines, "that by a stroke of luck we can appropriate even a phrase entirely." The poem continues to explore the uncertainty of the unknown in the following stanzas, of love and of human reason. ||
 * 10 || The Outcast || Lord Tennyson || Although it is clear that the speaker is addressing his reluctance in understanding his father, the exact subject of his ranting is quite murky. The title of the poem, The Outcast, gives little more insight on the reason speaker choses to examine his father's life. The extended metaphor of the speaker exploring his father's secrets as if he would explore a countryside forest ruin, or otherwise exotic "groves" and "hills' and abandoned "halls", would suggest that the speaker had never really understood his father and that his father was some kind of recluse. However, he does treat the exploration respectfully, as he describes it as "groves" and "halls" both locations that would command intimacy and respect. In the end, he expresses regret at not having known his father better. ||
 * 11 || Burial of a fisherman in Hydra || Grace Schulman || The poem glorifies the death of a common fisherman its allusions to the catholic church giving it more significance than a death of a fisherman is normally warranted in modern times. However, the fisherman is treated like a hero, given a lavish funeral ceremony and the respect of silence. The speaker knows however, that in truth, fishermen are not treated as heroes, but instead likens the event as transient as the passing day. ||
 * 12 || Anthem for Doomed Youth || Wilfred Owen || Anthem for Doomed Youth is a sonnet about the atrocities faced by the young soldiers who participated in world war 1. The men are described as being slaughtered like cattle, mindlessly, all for another man's gain. Also, Owen compares the funeral process of the soldiers who had died in the field to the funeral process of men who had died in times of peace. This juxtaposition between the 'choirs' and 'bells' of the church and the 'choir' of artillery shells paints a stark image of the death of many men whose lives were as unfulfilled as their funerals. ||
 * 13 || If || Rudyard Kipling || If discusses the values that a man should adhere to in order to be a man. The speaker addresses in his son in four stanzas of the values of belief in yourself, restraint in ambition, strength of will in the face of despair, and in achieving power while maintaining humility. The strong ABABCDCD rhyme scheme emphasizes the points that the speaker is making within the poem and unifies the poem as a whole rather than separate ideas addressed within each stanza. The triple auto rhyme of 'you' in the first stanza stress the speakers intensity in addressing his son. ||
 * 14 || I do not love you except because I love you || Pablo Neruda || This sonnet discusses the irrational nature of love. In the first section of the sonnet, lines 1-4, the speaker's tone is rather reflective and relatively devoid of emotion. He relates his experience with love in a matter of fact tone illustrating the fact that he does not fully understand his experience with love. The strong repetition of 'you', at least twice in every line, "I hate you deeply, and hating you//bend to you," creates an agitated tone, and shows that the speaker is perhaps tired of all the uncertainty expressed in the firs stanza and needs a definite answer to his question of whether he loves the subject of the poem or not. ||
 * 15 || I know why the caged bird sings || Maya Angelou || Throughout the poem, Angelou compares a wild bird with a caged one and wonders why the caged bird sings so beautifully while the free bird does not. The first stanzas' description of a wide free world that the free bird lives in is juxtaposed with the confined environment that the caged bird is described in. The poem continues to alternate between descriptions of the free bird and the caged bird in order to emphasize the contrast between each; the free bird does not waste his time singing of beauty when he can experience beauty whereas the caged bird sings beautifully of beauty but can never experience it. The free bird is described through positive, beautiful imagery like, 'dawn-bright lawn' while the caged bird is described with harsh, dark imagery such as, "his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream'. ||
 * 16 || A Dream within a Dream || Edgar Allan Poe || In this poem, the speaker argues that nothing in life can truly be lost, because memories are merely dreams within the dream of life itself. In the first stanza, the speaker seems to be adamant in this assertion "all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream", but in the second stanza, he doubts himself, writing in the same words, but with the word 'is' transposed to the beginning of the sentence to form a question. This clever repetition destroys the assertive tone of the speaker and introduces a glimmer of doubt within the speaker's mind whether the world is actually a dream within a dream or not and whether he will lose his precious memories. The sands are a clear reference to the sands of time, in this case, his memories, which is a apparently having trouble retaining. ||
 * 17 || Fire and Ice || Robert Frost || In this short poem, Robert Frost is wondering what human attribute will eventually be the cause of our downfall, our boundless desire or our capacity for hate. In it, he specifically symbolizes fire as desire and ice as hate, creating an interesting juxtaposition between two opposite human emotions illustrating the point that too much 'good' may be just as bad as too much 'evil' ||
 * 18 || Invictus || William Ernest Henley || Invictus addresses the judgment of souls that the dead must go through in order to reach paradise. The determined tone of the speaker illustrates the confidence in his soul and the way he has conducted himself throughout his life to guide his soul. This confidence further emphasized by his lofty attitude towards the difficulty in attaining salvation and the consequences of Hell as illustrated by these allusions, 'beyond this place of wrath and tears//looms but the Horror of the shade' and 'it matters not how strait the gate'. ||
 * 19 || Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening || Robert Frost || The speaker's content tone is betrayed by the last two lines of the poem which is a single line repeated, 'and miles to go before I sleep'. The poet writes about a the speaker taking a short break in a long journey to admire the beauty of the land around him. The even ABAA rhyme scheme contributes to the content tone of the speaker by connecting the ideas of each line to the next. The rhyme scheme is only broken at the end of the poem, where as mentioned before, the speaker acknowledges that he must move on. ||
 * 20 || As I grew Older || Langston Hughes || The speaker's reflective and anguished tone convey his frustration at having his dream, which is symbolized by the sun, covered by fate and expectations, which is symbolized by a dark wall. The structure of the poem, the varying line lengths follow the pace of the speaker's fragmented thoughts. The pace of the poem slows as the number of syllables in each line decreases and increases as the amount of syllables increases. ||
 * 21 || Television || Roald Dahl || The speaker is of the poem is distinctly the poet himself, expressing outrage at the invasion of the television set into the lives of young children. He emphasizes his point with the full capitalization of entire words and even entire lines. As this technique is rather informal and uncommon, it also creates humor of the biting kind, that is so effective in illustrating Dahl's point that the TV is worse than useless, that it corrupts a child's brain. Dahl also is careful to write in fragments and short lines, a technique more common in illustrated children's books than found in poetry. Thus, the audience of Dahl's rant are not only adults, but also the children who are the victims of TV. ||
 * 22 || Don't Go Far off || Pablo Neruda || The unifying structural technique in this sonnet is the repetition of "don't go far off, not even for a day, because" where the poet substitutes day for hour and then second, creating an increasing sense of urgency. The technique also emphasizes abstract sense of time that the speaker feels, where a second away from the subject creates a feeling of death. ||
 * 23 || Alone || Edgar Allan Poe || Poe describes the beauty of his lonely childhood through hyperboles and metaphors. The rhyming couplets create a flowing effect throughout the poem, giving the poem a thoughtful and wondering tone. The nature imagery emphasizes that beauty can be found not only in companionship but also in nature. ||
 * 24 || Did not go Gentle into that Good Night || Dylan Thomas || Dylan Thomas' Poem repeats two lines " rage, rage against the dying of the light." and "do not go gentle into that good night" at the end of alternating stanzas. The rhyme scheme of ABA unifies the stanzas, which address the coming of the 'good night' which is a symbol of death. And finally, the last stanza breaks from the structure of the poem, where the speaker of the poem addresses his father. ||
 * 25 || Warning || Jenny Joseph || Joseph addresses the social expectations that prevent adults from acting as free as they want to. The red hat is a symbol of rebellious behavior that the speaker wants to engage in but can not afford to as a middle aged adult. She wonders at the freedom that elders have because the social consequences of acting strange and rebellious are not as dire as they are for adults. ||
 * 26 || Hope is the thing with feathers || Emily Dickinson || Dickinson proposes through a metaphor that hope is like a tune that can be heard across the world, ethereal, but always present. Dickinson's choice in starting lines 2-6 with 'and' creates a wondrous tone of respect and awe of the power of this 'thing with feathers' by listing all the characteristics of hope that the speaker is so in awe. ||
 * 27 || Do not Stand at my grave and weep || Mary Elizabeth Frye || Rrye addresses the question of what happens when humans die in the poem Do not stand at my grave and weep. The speaker of the poem is the soul of a person who has passed away. The poet suggests that when a person dies, they become a part of nature through the speaker's repetition of "I am" followed by an imagery of nature. This structure emphasizes the fact that the soul became a part of the entire world and is not entombed in some coffin. ||
 * 28 || Mother to Son || Langston Hughes || Hughes uses a staircase as a metaphor for life. The speaker of the poem is a mother who is a telling her child to never give up. The poem lists all the hardship that a man might face in life through metaphors of "splinters, tacks, torn up boards, and places with no carpet on the floor" in order to emphasize that life isn't easy and that "life for me ain't been no crystal stair". The speaker's tone is encouraging rather than admonishing, creating a hopeful mood. ||
 * 29 || The Lesson || Roger McGough || The rhythm of the poem is created by the consistent alternating 8 syllable 7 syllable lines. The flowing, iambic rhythm is juxtaposed with the dark content of the poem, which involves a teacher killing his kids, creating a comical mood. The cliché imagery 'first come, first severed' and '"it struck with deadly aim" also contributed to the sarcastic tone. ||
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