Poems

After reading each poem below, research visual images for each poem, attempting to surmise the poet’s emotional intent. Post a copy of these images (one per poem) and submit a written response to the following questions for EACH poem.

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?



1 – Dylan Thomas – Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night:

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
After reading “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, I feel that when it is about that time to go one shouldn’t ramp and rave. I feel that in the poem it’s a struggle for light which is good to get easily over powered by darkness.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?
The image that I chose reflects the emotions conjured by the poem which shows what the sky looks like when darkness is starting to take over. It also portrays the rage with the color of red being present that can symbolize a battle.



2 – Gwendolyn Brooks – We Real Cool

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
I feel that what is mentioned is true, we do think that we are all cool in a way that we can just do whatever we want but when it comes down to it and no matter how cool we are we will eventually die.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?
This image reflects the reaction that one can be cool if they dress a certain way and are able to attract the opposite sex with that mind set.




3 – Emily Dickinson – I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
After reading this poem I feel that the message is trying to portray a person’s life is coming to a close and it’s starting with the brain. It still feels the heat making a beat similar to a drum but with less oxygen to it, it makes the body numb.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem? The image is suppose to resemble how time is falling down, like a countdown until it all stops and hits a surface. The image can also represent the time it takes for the body to last without getting enough oxygen to the brain and how things look when your losing consciousness.





4 - Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?

I feel that even though a road might not look as clear hence whatever can be waiting at the other side as long as you feel that you’ve made the right decision everything should be all well.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?
This image reflects the path in which you choose. It also shows that there are obstacles in the way that make you choose which way to go just by looks forcing a distraction and keeping you from succeeding.



5- Shel Silverstein -If the World Was Crazy

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
Through the poem it kept my interest. I felt that this poem was one I truly understood. I felt that the poem put me in that world. I was imagining a world of my own and thinking of how I could phrase a poem like that to share with others.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?
I feel that this can better explain what the world may look like in my world. I used this image because in “Alice in Wonderland,” this girl was able to do whatever she wanted and associated to animals and feel what they think.

Poetry

1) Define poetry in ONE sentence – Poetry is…

-Literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.

2) What do you believe determines what is a poem & what is not a poem?

- I believe that a poem is a type of literature that normally rhymes and expresses feelings towards something special or an occurrence that happened. A poem can be used to calm someone down from stress or cheer someone up. For example, pomes can also express feelings especially if it is used to win someone's heart over. I believe that it is difficult to tell what it a poem and what is not a poem because poems can be short, long, rhyme, not rhyme, and so on.

3) Visit www.Poets.org – review several poet biographies & their poems. Select 2 poets that are of interest to you. Summarize their biographies (one paragraph for each) and select one poem for each poet to share with the class. Post the poem or a link to the poem on your blog. How are these poems an example of what poetry is to you? Explain.

-Langston Hughes- James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature. Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whiteman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties.

-Robert Frost- Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, ans Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.

Poems

Dream Variations

By Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me-- That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! Whirl! Whirl! Till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening . . . A tall, slim tree . . . Night coming tenderly Black like me.

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15610

A Solider

by Robert Frost
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust. If we who sight along it round the world, See nothing worthy to have been its mark, It is because like men we look too near, Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, Our missiles always make too short an arc. They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect The curve of earth, and striking, break their own; They make us cringe for metal-point on stone. But this we know, the obstacle that checked And tripped the body, shot the spirit on Further than target ever showed or shone.
http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/A_Soldier