this is just to say

this is just to say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I actually did something a couple days ago. I ate my sister's chips and she was pissed! Anyway I liked this poem because I feel that everyone can relate to it. Everyone has either eaten food that wasn't theirs or had theirs eaten by someone else.

The author didn't use any punctuation. The only reason I could tell there were two sentences was that the first word of the second was capitalized. There is three stanzas, each consisting of four lines. I kinda saw the stanzas as steps. The first one is like the author admitted to eating the plums, second realizing he made a mistake, and then the third is asking for forgiveness. So it is like some saying I did this and I realized it was wrong and I am sorry. That is kind of how I saw it.

Sign for my Father, Who Stressed the Bunt

Sign for my Father, Who Stressed the Bunt by David Bottoms

On the rough cut diamond,
the hand-cut field below the dog lot and barn,
we rehearsed the strict techbique
of bunting. I watched from the infield,
the mound, the backstop
as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs
and shoulders squared toward the pitcher.
You could drop it like a seed
down either base line. I admired your style,
but not enough to take my eyes off the bank
that served as our center-field fence.

Years passed, three leagues of organized ball.,
now few lives. I could homer
into the garden beyond the bank,
into the left-field lot of Carmichael Motors,
and still you stressed the same technique,
the crouch and spring, the lead arm absorbing
just enough impact. That whole tiresome pitch
about basics never changing ,
and I never learned what you were laying down.

Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap,
let this be the sign
I'm getting a grip on the sacrifice.

First I have to say that I love this poem because it is about baseball :)

So this poem is three stanzas long. The first has eleven lines, the second nine, and the third three. Nothing really stuck out to me when it came to structure, it was pretty straight forward.

The reason I llike this poem so much is that it teaches a very important life lesson through something that I can relate to. It teaches that scarifice is needed in order to gain something in life just like a scarifice bunt is needed to score more runs. I like how in the first stanza it talks about the hand made field that he played on, this kind of showed the scarfice his father made from him.

What the mirror said

What the mirror said by Lucille Clifton

listen,
you a wonder.
you a city
of a woman.
you got a geography
of your own.
listen,
somebody need a map
to understand you.
someone needs directions
to move around you.
listen,
woman,
you not a noplace
anonymous
girl;
mister with his hands on you
he got his hands on
some
damn
body!

One thing that stuck out to me was that nothing was capitalized. It is one stanza with 21 lines. Some lines only consist of one word. This for me emphasizes the word. The author repeats the word "listens" three times within the poem; it is like the mirror is trying to tell the girl something but she just won't listen.

I think that this poem is saying that there is a lot more than young girls than just looks. And by looking in a "mirror" young women can reflect and see that there is so much more on the inside that makes them beautiful.

A Poison Tree

A Poison Tree by William Blake

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears.
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles.
And with soft, deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night
Till it bore an apple bright:
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

So first I noticed that this poem rhymed; it has an abab pattern. Then there is four stanzas that consist of four lines each. Nothing structurley stuck out to me. I noticed that the auther used some colons and semi-colons but other than that I didn't see much.

I liked this poem because it reminds me of what my mother always tells me: that if I have a problem with someone that I need to confront them and not talk behind their back because it only makes it worse.

"I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow."

I love this because it is so true! It is a lot easier to confront a friend who you are more confortable with than a person who you are less confortable.

I really enjoyed this poem.

You and I

You and I

I have corrupted you
I have fixed you
I have given up on you
I have battled for you
I have shed tears for you
I have laughed with you
I have hated you
I have adored you

You have struggled with me
You have conquered with me
You have hurt me
You have inspired me
You have wronged me
You have done right to me
You have failed me
You have proven to me

We have fought each other
We have loved each other
We have lost each other
We have found each other
We have turned from each other
We have faced each other
We have cut each other
We have bled for each other

I have to be with you
You have to stay with me
We have to live with each other

Because you and I make me

Goodbye to My Very Bestfriend

Goodbye to My Very Best friend

I am not ready but I have to say goodbye
To say this will not hurt would be a complete and utter lie
For you mean the absolute world to me
But this is just the way it has to be

My whole life I have had you by my side
With you I always could confide
You were the one I went to when I was crying
For only you knew that I was truly trying
You never gave up on me
Although it would have been easy
You stuck with me all through the years
Through all of the anger, laughter, tears

I don't know what I am going to do
I am going to be without you
I am scared because you I've always had
Who is going to be there when things get bad?
But I guess that it is time to move on
That part of my life is practically gone
But you have given me the tools to survive
And tackle life's problems as they arrive

I know that with your love and guidance I am set
I guess that I am not ready to admit it quite yet
But I know that I will figure out what to do
Because in my life I had you

I would not trade anything for what we share
People might judge because I still hold her hand: I do not care
Because of you I have the courage to give this thing called life a whirl
But whatever happens promise me that I will always be your little girl

Mom you are my very best friend
And will always be to the very end
But for now I have to say my farewell
Where I am going only time can tell

Questions We Ask About.......

Questions We Ask About...Life

Why do you make things so difficult?
Why are there so many ups and downs?
Am I living?
Are you on different planets?
Do I live for today or tomorrow?
When will all life end?
What am I supposed to do in life?
What is the answer to life?
How do I survive?

It was a dream

It was a dream by Lucille Clifton

in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her could i do,
oh what could I have done?
and she twisted her wild hair
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This. This. This.

So this poem is one stanza long and it contains 14 lines. It is also a free verse. One thing that I noticed was that she didn't capitalized anything even after punctuation. Only one "I" was capitalized. It seems that the little "i"'s are her greater self while the big "I" was her real self. "what" has its own line but I don't know the significance of that.
We all have an image of the person that we want to be and then what we really are. Maybe the author hasn't been the person that she wanted to be and not living her life to the fullest.

Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

they begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

I decided to do this poem just because this is what I used to do and still probably do. I have never actually looked at its structure. I noticed that all the stanzas are either two or three lines except one that is just one line: "or press an ear against its hive." I don't know the significance of this line. But the hive is the main place where the places are so maybe the author isolates it to show the importance of it.

There is no rhyme scheme which makes it free verse.

The Day Millicent Found the World

The Day Millicent Found the World by William Stafford


Every morning Millicent ventured farther
into the woods. At first she stayed
near light, the edge where bushes grew, where
her way back appeared in glimpses among
dark trunks behind her. Then by farther paths
or openings where giant pines had fallen
she explored ever deeper into
the interior, till one day she stood under a great
dome among columns, the heart of the forest, and knew:
Lost. She had achieved a mysterious world
where any direction would yield only surprise.


And now not only the giant trees were strange
but the ground at her feet had a velvet nearness;
intricate lines on bark wove messages all
around her. Long strokes of golden sunlight
shifted over her feet and hands. She felt
caught up and breathing in a great powerful embrace.
A birdcall wandered forth at leisurely intervals
from an opening on her right: "Come away, Come away."
Never, before had she let herself realize
that she was part of the world and that it would follow
Wherever she went. She was part of its breath.


Aunt Dolbee called her back that time, a high
voice tapering faintly among the farthest trees,
Milli-cent! Milli-cent! And that time she returned,
but slowly, her dress fluttering along pressing
back branches, her feet stirring up the dark smell
of moss, and her face floating forward, a stranger's
face now, with a new depth in it, into the light.

This poem consists of three stanzas with the first two have 11 lines and the last 7. I actually have trouble with this poem because I am having trouble finding structural things that stick out to me but I understand it pretty well. What I noticed after a while was the dialect in line 8 in the second stanza "Come away, Come away." I don't know whether it is saying come away from what is is comfortable or to go to what makes her comfortable. Another thing that stuck out was how in the third stanza, the third line when her aunt calls her; her name is split up with a dash "Milli-cent! Milli-cent!" I don't know whether that means anything.

Cottonmouth Country

Cottonmouth Country by Louise Gluck

Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.

So first I noticed that the poem is one stanza that consists of eight lines. The rhyme scheme is ababcdcd. One thing that that I saw was that "Death" is captialized. So maybe the author did this to show how dominat death is in this country.
Another thing that stuck out to me was the "I know." in the last line. It follows "Birth, not death, is the hard loss." So for me the "I know." says that the statement before is true with no exceptions.

Sort of a Song

Sort of a Song by William Carlos Williams


Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait
sleepless.

- though metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

So the first thing that I noticed was that this poem contained two sestet ( I think?) stanzas. When it came to rythm it was free verse. Another thing that stuck out to me was how "sleepless" was it's own line. From going from the second to last to the last line there almost seems to be a pause when reading it. For me that made what the author was saying become more real.
In the second stanza the lines "Compose. (No ideas/but in things) Invent!" really stuck out to me. I think that "(No ideas but in things)" explain what the author meant be "Compose." and "Invent!" Create art by the things that influence you.

Song of the Powers

Song of the Powers by David Mason

Mine, said the stone,
mine is the hour.
I crush the scissors,
such is my power,
stronger than wishes,
my power, alone.

Mine, said the paper,
mine are the words
that smother the stone
with imagined birds,
reams with them, flown
from the mind of the shaper.

Mine, said the scissors,
mine all the knives
gashing through paper's
ethereal lives;
nothing's so proper
as tattering wishes.

As stone crushes scissors,
as paper snuffs stone
and scissors cut paper,
all end alone.
So heap up your paper
and scissors your wishes
and uproot the stone
from the top of the hill.
They all end alone.
As you will, you will.

I really liked this poem. I thought that the poet symbolized power through the game rock paper scissors. I think that the rock was strength, paper was words and imagination, and scissors represent mental abuse.

The diction that the poet uses really makes the objects come alive and seem very powerful. "crush" "smother" "gashing". With the structure of the poem I saw that there is four stanzas and the last one is longer than the first three. It could be that the first three are talking about the powers individually and the last one all three comes together. This is significant because the poem talks about how having one power is bad. But combinding all three would be better.

The Cat

The Cat by Miroslav Holub

Outside it was night
like a book without letters.
And the eternal dark
dripped to the stars through the sieve of the
city.

I said to her
do not go
you'll only be trapped
and bewitched
and will suffer in vain.

I said to her
do not go
why want
nothing?

But a window was opened
and she went,

a black cat into the black night,
she dissolved,
a black cat in the black night,
she just dissolved
and no one ever saw her again.
Not even she herself.

But you can hear her
sometimes,
when it's quiet
and there's a northerly wind
and you listen intently
to your own self.

When I first read this poem I instantly connected with it.
What I thought of is a good kid turning down the wrong path and struggling with life. The kid knows what he is doing is wrong but he is not in a good situation and does it anyway. "she dissolved" he lost himself and he is no longer that "good kid" anymore. But in the mist of all of his struggling when he sits down and thinks he can remember the kid that he used to be.
I really connected with this poem because my brother has struggled with things for awhile now. He is a good kid but just went down the wrong path and is not in the Best situation. But I know that he wants to find himself again.

Alone

Alone By Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As other were - I have not seen
As other saw - I could not bring
My passions from a common spring -
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow - I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone -
And all I lov'd - I loved alone -
Then - in my childhood - in the dawn
Of a most stromy life - was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still -
From the torrent, or the fountain -
From the red cliff of the mountain -
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold -
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by -
From the thunder, and the storm -
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view -

I really enjoyed this poem because I felt like I could relate to it. I thought that this poem was saying that the person is different an because of that he felt like everything he did he did it alone.
"I could not bring
My passions from a common spring"
So here he can not be passionate in the way others are. Different things make him passionate and this might make he seem odd.
"I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone"
Here I thought of "He walks to the beat of a different drum". Things that make us happy do not make him happy.
Everything that he does he does alone because the things that he is passionate about and happy about nobody else can same the same thing.