Poetry Project

Lost Souls

I walked into the house and heard no noise

The loud silence hurt me so much I cried

For I must now see that one of my boys’

Soul was stolen from me when he died

It seemed a normal sunny day at school

When his last bell rang and he left for home

He walked with his head in the clouds, a fool

And he began to treacherously roam

He did not see the truck coming to him

Nor did the man inside the vehicle

The impact of the truck was really grim

And sadly for the boy it was fatal

A part of me is now empty inside

For my darling angel just had to die

Reflection: This poem was a bit more challenging then some of the others because of how many criteria there were, like the iambic pentameter and the rhyming sequence. It was still a lot of fun writing, though, because the topic of love and loss gave me the option of using a lot more emotion than in some other poems. I incorporated the literary devices intended for the sonnet, like rhyming, stanzas, speaker, and rhythm.

White

I am everywhere

Yet people don’t acknowledge me

But I can be helpful

To a tolerable degree

In a box full of crayons

I am the sharpest one

Even kids think I’m useless

And that hurts a ton

The red, the yellow

The orange, the green

Everyone but me

In fact, I think it’s kind of mean

They all get used

But I can’t fight

Let’s be honest

No one likes white

Reflection: This poem was a lot of fun. Besides the four-line stanza and occasional rhyme, I focused on writing about how I would feel if I was a color. This was a fun topic because it seemed unique and seemed like it could come out well if I could include the right amount of emotion for a color. I also used some personal experience of what people have told me about what colors they liked or did not like to use to help write this poem.

Dear Owner

They say a dog

Is a man’s best friend,

 Blub Blub

But why can’t I be?

Blub Blub

I’m just as friendly,

And kind,

And fun to be with

Blub Blub

You always say I’m your favorite

Because I don’t make a mess

Blub Blub

Or make to much noise

Blub Blub

Or cost to much

Blub Blub

Or require any real work

Besides feeding of course

Blub Blub

But you always just end up

Flushing me down the toilet

Blub Blub

I feel like you don’t even acknowledge me

And that makes me feel worthless

Blub Blub

When it really shouldn’t

Blub Blub

So I am my own best friend

Blub Blub

Since you have so rudely,

Declined the position.

Reflection: I didn’t really have any idea how this poem would turn out when I started it. The way I wrote it was that I just came up with the first thing on my mind, and kept writing about that without stopping until I was done. I didn’t really have any criteria or literary devices in mind that I had to use, so I just basically wrote in free verse. I found this one very enjoyable to write, and I think it came out well.

Series of Haikus

The bear is asleep

Peaceful, but

With blood in its mouth

So many books

The smell of smoke

German smiles

The glass falls

Thousands of pieces

Screams

The room is eerily quiet

Except for the muffled sighs

Of lost hope

The trees

Reflected in the water

Ripples distort the image

The echo of life

The whisper of death

The breaking point in between

Eyes closed

Heart open

And will never close again

My lovely childhood

Is no longer a childhood

Nor is it lovely

The standing and clapping

People seem happy

Yet they are empty inside

Reflection: These haikus were very quick things that I wrote and I found them really easy to write. The fact that I didn’t really have to use the 5-7-5 format and that it just needed to be 3 lines with some sort of interesting ending gave me so much leeway, and allowed me to write whatever I wanted, as long as it was short. I realized when I was done that some of the better ones were darker, and I thought that might have been because the twist endings I used were sometimes a little scary or at least had the option to be.

Reading Response on The Tyger by William Blake

The poem The Tyger, by William Blake, was about a tiger, and the poet wondering where it was from, who created it, and what kind of person would create it. I choose this poem because both my parents love it and I thought it would be interesting to really deconstructed it and see what it’s about, and not just read the poem and not know what it means. I thought the poem had some really deep messages and some things that you couldn’t get just by reading it, so I choose it to learn and understand more about it. I also thought the poets depiction of the tiger was fascinating and I wanted to know more about it.

The themes in each stanza were very similar to each other. The first and sixth stanzas (they were the same) were about how there was a huge tiger in the woods with a fiery spirit, and the poet was wondering what kind of God could have created this creature by drawing it. The second stanza asked about where you were created and who had the courage to create you by breathing life into you, and the last line could have been a reference to Prometheus. The third stanza asked about who molded you, and mentioned how the tiger was a dreadful creature. The fourth stanza asked about where you were forged and by whom, like the tiger was a mechanical thing. The fifth stanza was a bit different though. The poet asked if God was happy with his creation, and would the same god who created such gentle creatures as a lamb make something so dreadful as the tiger that even the stars can’t defend against it. There was one central idea I got from what the poet wrote, and that was: what kind of God could create a creature as dreadful and powerful as the tiger, and how was it created? The tiger could also represent harmful living things in the world, or just dangerous things in general. Each stanza added on to the general idea of the tiger, and I thought that was really interesting and powerful because even though the stanzas are very similar, they are able to give new ideas to the tiger and its meaning.

The poet conveys his ideas by comparing the tiger not to other animals, but comparing it to lots of others things like fire or by relating it to God. There were several literary devices used, some of which were personification, alliteration, rhyming, stanzas, and a lot more. He used all of these for many reasons, but they all make the poem better. The rhyming, for instance, was used to help make the poem flow better and give it more of a beat. Repetition is used because it helps emphasize the most important parts, like the first stanza gets reused at the end, making it seem like it’s significant. There was another part where the poet used the words burning bright (alliteration), which gave an interesting touch to the poem and made it seem to flow even better. There were also a lot of metaphors about the tiger, comparing it to fire. These literary devices added to the poems overall message about the tiger, and I thought helped to give more details and to make the poem flow better and read more easily.

The poem for me gave off a very dark tone because of how it’s written and the kind of vocabulary the poet uses. It gave me this feeling that the tiger could be or represent a bad thing or all bad things. He uses words like dare and fearful a lot and also words like twist and fire and terrors that for me imply that there is something bad in the poem, and since the poem is mainly about the tiger I thought the tiger could be that bad thing. The poem reminded me of several things, one of which being the tiger from “The Jungle Book”, Shere Khan. Both characters gave off a dangerous tone, plus they’re both tigers. The poem also made me think about a question that seems to pop up a lot, which is if God is good or bad. I have thought about this question before, but this poem adds more to the bad side for me because it’s telling me that even though he made some great animals, he also made some terrible ones too. I was able to connect to the poem in that the poet took a realistic object and gave it more of a symbolic meaning, which I see myself doing sometimes. The poem also brought up some questions. One was, why did he choose a tiger of all things? It’s not a common object and I don’t understand what his connection is to that animal. I also wondered why he thought of the tiger in that way. Did he have an incident with one or did something else tiger-related happen? I don’t really know. I would like to know what kind of life William Blake led because of how dark his poem is.

 The poem The Tyger by William Blake is about a tiger and what it means to him. This poem gave me a new perspective of the tiger because of how the poet wrote about it, and it also gave the tiger and alternate meaning relating to darkness, which I found fascinating