Something Poetry Related

The Night Has A Thousand Eyes

by Francis William Bourdillon

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying of the sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

I love this poem because it is simple but it is very beautiful. I think it is an amazing poem to describe love.

Slam

Haiku-playing god

For this I shall go
To hell's pit for playing God

Judging as I please.

By Ros Shrapnel





Dead Head
by Marie Josephine Smith


Spare me your sympathy.
You grate on my nerves.
Your insidious creeping does,
naught to disturb my life.
I am without emotion.
My conscience does not trouble me.
Bereft of beliefs.
Time is a thief.
Perpertrates, tranquility.
I don't want your pity.
For I am a rock.
I am a mountain.
A fountain of sorrow.
Has blighted my life.
Strife torn.
I have turned cold.
Yet still old enough to know better.

Response Journal #4

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats is most known for his book Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. This includes a lot of the poems that are most famous. While reading his poems I noticed a pattern. He liked to write poems concerning the Irish life. He also likes to make Irish life seem more pleasant than what most people thought it was. For example in the poem we went over in class The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

When You Are Old

by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

When I read this poem it made me think of my grandparents. It made me think of them because in my interpretation its about old age. Not just old age but what you go through as an old man/woman. When you become old you start to realize and appreciate the things you once had. For example:

dream of the soft look Your eyes once had

When I read this line I think of how when you get old you start to lose the youth you once had. Your mind, body, and soul start to age. As you get older you might also have had or do have a spouse. As you age you come closer to death, and all people do, some more than others though. Generally a couple will not die at the same time, and with that one must come before the other. This is also remembering that as you grow old you are bound to lose that loved one. You will think back to the times in which you shared life with them. You will also realize that they have gone, and if you believe in god, they have most likely gone to another place. The last three lines show this. If love flees, it is leaving. If it is pacing over mountain tops and is seen in the 'crowd of stars', stanza 3 line 4, then most likely they are in a better place. A place where there is light which symbolizes the heavens.

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I liked this poem because it is a beautiful way to remember. It describes a memory of someone you loved. Even though it is sad to think about I still can appreciate this poem because it is showing that there is beauty in death.

Journal #5

In the collection of Dr. Seuss's poems he uses a lot of alliteration. For example he used it in the poem If I Ran the Zoo. In this poem he makes up a word, Obsks, then rymes several other made up words with that, such as, Nobsks, Bobsks, Jobsks, and more. He often times has a rhyme scheme aabb or a couplet. Often time he will repeat the same word in each line of the stanzas. For example: The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. In The Cat in the Hat he uses 'I cannot' to start off the first four lines, then he uses 'my' later in the poem. In Green Eggs and Ham he uses 'I do not like them'. Also when he splits them into couplets he usually will only put two sets of couplets in each stanza. Like in the poem The Juice,

I did not kill my wife.
I did not slash her with a knife.
I did not bonk her on the head.
I did not know she was dead.

I stayed at home that fateful night.
I took a limo, then took a flight.
The bag I had was just for me.
My bag! My bag! Hey, let it be!

He uses white space as shown above a lot of the time. I have noticed that he likes to have stanzas that consist of four lines. It seems he does this to divide his lines up into perfect couplets.
He uses Iamic Pentameter in the poem above and majority of his other poems. This really helps with the rhythm. It makes the poems he writes seem even. They come in two oftens times.

Journal #2

How does form (structure, rhythm, meter, line breaks) affect meaning in poetry?

The form a poem may have can affect the way we read it. For example if a poem has a large introductary word with several different lines that follow right next to it, stacked on top of each other, than someone might read it like so:

I love (large letters, also in front of the three small lines)

the crystal ball that is the world (small letters).
to hold it in the hand uncurled (small letters).
the feel of the sphere so knurled (small letters).

If I were to see a poem like this and read it I would automatically read:

I love the crystal ball that is the world.
I love to hold it in the hand uncurled.
I love the feel of the sphere so knurled.

Now if I love were to be the same size as the other letters and only in front of the top line I would read:

I love the crystal ball that is the world.
to hold it in the hand uncurled.
the feel of the sphere so knurled.

The first way gives the poem a very unique and fun way of looking at it. I like the way you reuse the first part, I love. It draws you back to the beginning. The structure and the way that the poem was made is very different. I think that it affects the way we look at it and the way we read it. If the structure of a poem is unique, different, and fun then it will read differently than one that is just one big chunk. Another example would be one of the Peotry 180 poems we did earlier on. Poem number 94, My Daughters In New York, by James Reiss. This poem read very strange. It was hard to follow and made the poem seem more complicated than it actually was.

EDEN by Ina Rousseau

Eden

by Ina Rousseau

Ina Rousseau

Somewhere in Eden, after all this time,

does there still stand, abandoned, like

a ruined city, gates sealed with grisly nails,

the luckless garden?

Is sultry day still followed there

by sultry dusk, sultry night,

where on the branches sallow and purple

the fruit hangs rotting?

Is there still, underground,

spreading like lace among the rocks

a network of unexploited lodes,

onyx and gold?

Through the lush greenery

their wash echoing afar

do there still flow the four glassy streams

of which no mortal drinks?

Somewhere in Eden, after all this time,

does there still stand, like a city in ruins,

forsaken, doomed to slow decay,

the failed garden?