For my poetry essay, I have chosen Dulce et Decorum Est because it is based on reality. It is about World War I and the constant nightmares that a former soldier lived during that time. He is re-living those awful days by the constant nightmares and memories that will never fade. Imagine having to go through life with the burden on your back of all the people you saw die. Your friends, your comrades, and all those young souls that were lost for defending our country. Imagine the pain and suffering that went on them. And then, compare it to now. Sadness all around us, and we can't help but to l...

• Word Count: 710
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

In the poem, "After Apple-Picking," by Robert Frost, a man has been picking apples all day on a ladder. Night is going to fall soon and he is tired, so he must leave the field for the day. That morning, he had a vision when he looked at a bunch of grass through a sheet of ice he removed from a drinking trough. He thought it looked like the world was melting. He then dropped a thin piece of ice. As he recalls the vision, he is falling asleep. In his dreams that night he will dream of apples. He feels annoyed with the apples needing harvesting, because he has to be careful with them, and making ...

• Word Count: 865
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

The use of imagery and figurative language in poetry can be used to add complexity and depth to the plot and overall tone of a poem. Often times an author will incorporate poetic devices in order to stimulate the senses of the reader in a nuanced manner that further enhances the message or theme of the poem. Similarly in Sonnet 12, Shakespeare's use of poetic devices is used in conjunction with the actual words to enhance the idea of the passage of time. Starting from the title (the number "12") the reader is already exposed to the complex way in which the author alludes to time. Furthermore t...

• Word Count: 877
• Approx Pages: 4

... until after her death. After her death, her sister found over 1,700 of Emily's poems. Of these many poems written by Emily Dickinson, many have been passed on for deeper analysis. Three of these are, "I'm Nobody! Who are you?", "Hope is the Thing With Feathers", and "Papa above". "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" is a poem about ... the public sphere. Here Dickinson is touching on her own failure to become a published poet. Thus said, most of the society looks at her as "nobody", since her poetry is not published. "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" is an example of a comical poem. As this poem may be ...

• Word Count: 591
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

John Donne's poem, "The Broken Heart" is composed of a multitude amount of themes, worthy diction, poetic devices, and figurative language that fall into place in order to successfully emphasize on the thoughts of heartache from the speaker. The speaker kicks off the poem by declaring that a man who claims he's been in love for an hour is crazy, "He is stark mad whoever says That he hath been in love an hour, Yet not that love so soon decays, But that it can ten in less space devour;" (1-4). He attempts to say that it's not because love is destroyed in an hour, but because it will destroy the ...

• Word Count: 886
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Kelly Cherry's "Alzheimer's" explores the life of a man before and during the onset of his suffering from the disease. The poem begins with a tone that one could see as harsh and insensitive. This insensitivity is proven when the poet describes the man as "a crazy old man back from the hospital, his mind rattling like the suitcase, swinging from his hand that contains shaving cream, a piggy bank, a book he sometimes pretends to read" (1-5). In the beginning of the poem, he has just returned from the hospital. The poem suggests that, in his prime, that he was a spritely young man. He had a gene...

• Word Count: 545
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Kenneth Slessor is commonly regarded by many to be the best Australian poet of his generation, perhaps all time. His poem "Sleep" can be interpreted mainly in one of two ways. One could see it as a personification of sleep, or depiction of childbirth. The poem's textual integrity allows for both interpretations to be supported through techniques founded within the text. Each stanza within the poem provides evidence to support either interpretation although; Slessor may be using one of the said meanings as an analogy for the other. The first stanza supports the personification of sleep with ...

• Word Count: 684
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Jason Nichols' poem "Our Generation" was written in early February 2014. Nichols was 14 and in eighth grade at the time he wrote the poem. The title "Our Generation" simply brings in readers to see what the speaker has to say. The poem starts off with heavy critique of today's generation. The meaning is later reversed. The tone changes and the reader can potentially be motivated at the end. This is all due to the speaker's last line of the poem. It is what truly unravels the power of this reverse poem. The fact that an eighth grader at the time wrote this, means that it does not take much to p...

• Word Count: 779
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

The livid, frustrated poem, "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, is about a young woman who is forced to remember the death of her father. In the poem, Plath creates a formerly naive speaker, who adored her father, who passed away and was replaced with someone who possessed the same character traits: the speaker's husband. The absolutely cruel diction used in the poem describes the intense nature of the relationship the speaker had with the one she once loved through use of literary elements, such as imagery, metaphors, hyperboles, and rhyme scheme. Plath's imagery throughout the poem is extremely vivid. ...

• Word Count: 994
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Unique works of Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker), subtly reflects upon her life. As such a strong figure for Aboriginals, one that fought for equal rights, including the right to be granted full citizenship, many of her poems reflects upon on the emotions felt by many Aboriginals. To do so, in her poem, 'We are going', the desperation and fight for her humble and proud community to receive equality is clearly evident. In her famous poem, "We are Going", Noonuccal reflects on the pain and sadness the Aboriginal people feel after being forced to leave their native lands. The poem is written...

• Word Count: 545
• Approx Pages: 2

William Wordsworth's poem "I wandered lonely as a cloud" is considered one of the best poems in history. The story that the speaker tells in the poem portrays all his emotions brought from nature. He starts by telling that he was wandering like a cloud floating above hills and valleys and then he saw thousands daffodils twinkle in the milky way and the water waves that danced beside them brought him joy and company. He never knew what wealth that image would bring him, until he was feeling "vacant" or "pensive", and this would help him to enjoy and re-feel the same emotions. The structure, lan...

• Word Count: 869
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

The Tyger is one of the best poems from the romanticism era which was during the late 18th century and the early 19th century. The Tyger was one of William Blakes most famous poems and is still very popular today. During the romanticism era they focused their writing on emotion and imagination but William Blake was more of a gothic writer during this era which is a style of writing that was drawn out of romantic writing. In The Tyger William blake uses many different types of literary devices such as repetition, rhetorical questions and symbolism. When we look at the first stanza of the poem T...

• Word Count: 610
• Approx Pages: 2
• Has Bibliography

... understanding. In the case of To an Athlete Dying Young, the appeal and attraction of rhyming serves as the meeting point for the adolescent and mature, at which point the analysis of life and death is able to take place. Rhythm is the beat to the poem. In this case the rhythm sounds like soldiers marching on foot. The steady beat ... the image of a young athlete dying and laying to rest with other people from the town who have passed away. To an Athlete Dying Young is an intuitive piece of poetry which leaves readers dazzled over the thought of fatality and what it means to truly fade ...

• Word Count: 1155
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Who Am I? You make me sleep near the animals You don't respect the pride I may have in myself I'm more alone than the rest of y'all Ain't nobody ever cared 'bout me You isolate me from everyone else You make me feel like my skin color makes me less of a man I'm cast out with not a friend in sight I ain't had nobody for a long time You call me a nigger; heck got me callin' myself that now You let me stay because of my bad back and I've seen them all come and got I see no one cares to say Hi to the lil ole colored man Nobody come in a colored man's room You know my back ain't no good but...

• Word Count: 870
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

In Emily Dickinson's "There's a certain slant of light," the poet provides yet another glimpse into her world of patriarchal oppression and the overall entropy of the seasons. In this poem, even light is oppressive – the contrast between light and dark is shown to be quite close to the contrast between life and meaning. Through her use of descriptive imagery, syntax and form, Emily Dickinson takes a short poem and manages to eke a tremendous amount of meaning out of it, likening light to the reminder that death will be upon us eventually. Dickinson's level of descriptiveness in these passage...

• Word Count: 562
• Approx Pages: 2
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate