This poem has a rhyme scheme and uses imagery, for example, his lips  are
pale and still. I think this poem was written in respect to someone. He sounds
very pleased and hopeful. He mentions the death of his captain but I don't
exactly know what that's supposed to mean. However, the poem doesn't sound so
depressing because of the way he describes it. It's weird but the poet sounds
excited and cheerful when he's not supposed to. I think the poet has rather gone
mad because he's too upset. I also feel like the mood of the poem did not
change throughout the entire poem. The way the poet reassures the dead
captain made me feel confused. Because the poet is glad that their fearful trip
is over but it seems like he's really shocked that his captain's dead. It's kind
of like a mix of feelings/emotions which I find it interesting.

    I think this quote/poem reflects Mr. Keating, the poet’s personality and thoughts. I feel like he has his own style of expressing his ideas. When he was saying to the students, it just grabbed their attention. I think the reason why they were interesting is because he was different from other teachers. (He calls himself a free thinker.) This quote/poem is really meaningful in my opinion. It gives reasons why we need poems and I greatly agree with it. It seems so true and seems like it doesn’t need any more explanation. The poem made me think that the poet has strong beliefs and is a really passionate person. This made me think about poems again, like what they exist for and what’s so important about them. I like how the quote/poem itself has no boundaries (no racism, no sexism, etc.); it’s for the free minded.

I think the author’s trying to relate life to river. For example, he described the river in a good way but also how things can go wrong, which also gives us a little hint about his life experiences. The author says that he’s seen the end of the river and how it died. This tells me that he had difficult times in his life. He also said that the river is unanswerable. Many things are unanswerable and the author means that he’s just walking along the flow (because rivers can symbolize the flow our lives). This might be because he believes in certain things or he may be too dependent on something. In the beginning, he described how amazing and great the river (or life) is and how he has too many reasons to love being alive. And he continues talking about the ups and downs in life. I think this poem makes me feel relaxed and I find it easy to relate to.

1.Alliteration: use of repeated consonants or stresses syllables, especially at the beginning of words.
E.g." Five miles meandering with a mazy motion."

2.Allusion: figure of speech that makes a reference to a place,person, or something that happened.
E.g. "The girl's love of sweets was her Achilles heel."

3.Figurative language: describing something by comparing it with something else.
E.g. "Alright, the sky misses the sun at night. "

4.Free verse: poetry that does noy rhyme or have a regular meter.
E.g. "I can't believe I'm so high
        feeling like a queen
        I stretch my arms out to the sides "

5.Hyperbole: Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
E.g. "I've told you a million times"

6. Imagery: appealing to the senses.
E.g. "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May"

7.Lyric: a short poem of songlike quality.
E.g. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day"

8.Metaphor: figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison.
E.g. "The streets were a furnace
        The sun an executioner"

9. Mood: overall feeling of the poem, this can be created by the tone or by the language choicesof the poem.
E.g. "I'm sick
         Not pain filled headache sick"

10 Onomatopoeia: The formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named.
E.g. "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds"

11.Oxymoron: a multiple part word or phrase that contradicts its self.
E.g. "Ralph, if you're gonna be a phony
          You might as well be a real phony"

12. Paradox: A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true.
E.g. "I'm a compulsive liar
         Do you believe them or not?"

13.Personification: inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as posessing human form.
E.g. "The wind stood up and gave a shout"


14. Repition: an instance of using a word, phrase, or clause more than once in a short passage.
E.g." When parrots do it 
         It's parrotting"

15.Rhyme Scheme: identify or close similarity of sound between accented syllables.
E.g. "Whose woods these are I think i know
          His house is in the village though"

16.Rhythm: the sense of movement in speech, marked by the stress, timing, and quantity of syllables.
E.g. "When the dog bites
         When the bee stings"

17.Simile: two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usully in a phrase introduced by like or as.
E.g. She dealt with moral problems as a clear deals with meat"

18.Stanza: A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem.
E.g. "Blah Blah Blah
         Blah blah blah"

19.Symbol: something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention.
E.g. "We sew,sew,prick out fingers
         dull out sight, producing what?
         A pair of slippers, sir, to put on when you're weary."

20.Tone: The attitude of an author.
E.g. "Goddam money. 
          It always ends up making you blue as hell"

21.Understatement: A disclosure of statement that is less than complete.
E.g. "Some say the world will end in fire. 
         Some say in ice.
         From what I've tasted of desire
        I hold with those who favor fire.
        But if it had to perish twice,
        I think I know enough of hate
        To say that for destruction ice
        Is also great
        And would suffice.

What i like about poetry:

-descriptive in an interesting way
-fun
-it's like matching a puzzle
-i like how they use short lines to explain a complicated/confusing topic
-fun way to express ideas/feelings/emotions
-it's like a short,classic, and a meaningful story

What i dislike about poetry:

-i get confused easily
-hard to understand
-difficult to interpret by myself sometimes
-long poems are boring because if i skip each line without understanding them, then the next line would be confusing also.
-not accurate meanings

3 Poems

1) Fire and Ice
 Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-Robert Frost

2) Where the Sidewalk ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
 And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
 And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
 And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

- Shel Silverstein

3) The Road not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
 
- William Shakespeare

     I think the poet has a strong belief in love. He believes that love should be stable. The poem is saying that love is always an everlasting one and people should not be taken lightly. If it’s not an everlasting one and is replaceable, it isn’t a true one. The poet sounds positive yet desperate. This poem also has a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, etc. The words are so appealing that they made me easier to understand. The figurative language here is alliteration. The first part has many repeating letters and sounds in a series of words. I kind of like it because what it’s talking about is sort of far from reality, thus making me feel like I’m in a dream like state. 

Sonnet XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
 
-Elisabeth Barret Browning


     I think she means that there shouldn’t be specific reasons to be loved for, such as for someone’s smile or his or her look. She said she wants to be loved for love’s sake only. Those other reasons are changeable and not trustable. She also said that she wants to be loved for love’s sake only because, that way, love will go on forever and will be the only love that survives. She sounds so sincere as she describes her point. And her point is that she wants to be loved only for love’s sake and nothing else; it seems like she has very strong opinions. I think she used an idiom for her figurative language. At the end of each sentence, she adds more adjectives; they’re like grammatically confusing sentences.

Sonnet 18

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
 
-William Shakespeare

    I think this poem’s purpose is to show how he thinks of something/someone. The poet, William Shakespeare, compared someone he loved to many things, such as seasons and different kinds of weather, also using many descriptive words. He seems like he’s stuck on only one idea and so he digs deeper into that topic. Because he described the person in a very great detail, it was easier for me to understand his purpose. I think this poem is an example of a metaphor, because he made many comparisons and made us picture what he was trying to say. I like it because it has a pretty great sense of flow, but it was a bit challenging because every line had its own meaning and the entire poem was tricky and a little difficult to follow along.


Sonnet XXVI

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
 -Edna St Vincent Millay

    I think the author wants to say about her love and what she’s dealing with. She describes her love in a very strong way, saying that she’s the only one loving fearlessly. No matter what, she tries to survive and still love that person when she’s all alone. I think this means that it’s an unrequited love. It has a rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, etc. I think this is an example of a metaphor, again. It uses comparison to describe how she feels and what she wants to relate to. I think the poem is just okay. It’s not something I can relate to or interesting. This was quite challenging because it uses different styles of words that I’ve never heard of.