This poem has no rhyme and scheme. It has three stanzas and six lines in each stanza. This poem mocks the structure and refrain of the children’s nursery rhyme, “This little piggy…”. Justice tweaks this poem to be very dark. The tone is sinister because it replaces the pigs from the nursery rhyme with a different stories of people who have gone mad. There is a terminal refrain being “And this one cried No No No No All day long”  

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

            This poem has an a, b, a, b rhyme scheme however, the a’s are slant rhymes. I thought this was an interesting object to write an ode to. Since an ode is supposed to be praising something and an urn represents death which is not something that is usually praised. The diction is somewhat hard to understand. There is alliteration and repition such as “of marble men and maidens overwrought”, “heart high”, “beauty is truth, truth beauty”, “More happy love! More happy, happy love”.

When I read this poem to myself I found it to be in iambic pentameter. There is an a, b, a, b rhyme scheme with a rhyming couplet at the end of each stanza. There are three stanzas with six lines in each stanza. Love is capitalized and personified as being Jesus or God. I figured Love must be some sort of version of Christ when he says “Who made the eyes but I?”. What seems to be happening in the poem is the author or narrator has come in contact with Christ and is telling him that he is not worthy and ungrateful, that he has sinned. The Christ replies to this as giving him forgiveness. This is a very religious poem but it was difficult for me to find a lot of poetic elements in it.

“Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now” by A.E. Housman

            The tone of this poem is very playful. The way it reads is with the a, a, b, b rhyme scheme is very light. There are three stanzas with 4 lines in each stanza (quatrain). There is alliteration in the second stanza, “seventy spring a score”. Housman refers to life and age throughout the poem; I had to look up “three score years and ten” thinking it was his age but it means life span. He talks about his life and the time he has left. There is also assonance in the last stanza: “fifty springs are little room”.

            There are seven stanzas with four lines in each stanza making it a quatrain. Euphony is very present in this poem; the lines flow very well. I found a lot of assonance. For example: the first line – telephone, goes, and cold, sixth line- ringing, listening, still, tenth line, night and right (also internal rhyming there). There are rhyming couplets in each stanza, however they are slant rhymes. The way I read this poem was in iambic pentameter.

“Grass” by Carl Sangburg

            This was a very interesting poem to me because grass is being personified in a morbid but interesting way. The diction is very repetitive because the poem keeps going back to the piling of bodies, and I think repeating it makes it stronger. It shows that this must have been during the time of the war since there are so many bodies coming and being piled in certain landmarks like Gettysburg and Austerlitz. It shows how time has passed and how the grass really does cover everything at the end when it says “Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor What place is this? Where are we now?”. There is cacophony in this poem because it is not a very pleasant poem especially when it comes to the repeating of “pile the bodies high”.

This poem has 3 stanzas with 4 lines (quatrain) in the first and last stanza and 5 (cinquain) in the middle stanza. The rhyme scheme is a,b,c,c so there are rhyming couplets at the end of each stanza. This poem was pretty complicated for me but I think I got the gist of it. The title/ first line basically sums up the meaning of the poem. Dickinson uses similes, “The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs”, comparing nerves to tombs and how after being in pain, nerves are calm and stagnant like tombs. She also says, “A Quartz contentment, like a stone”, although I’m not entirely sure what she is referring to when she says “A Quartz contentment”. She uses imagery through the colors she mentions like quartz, stone, and lead are all grayish silver colors. The last line makes me think that it could be about death coming after pain instead of just a good feeling. She also says it is a “formal feeling”, and the whole process of funerals and dying can be very formal. Also, she compares nerves to tombs, so there again is the hint of death. The last line says “…then letting go” which to me sounds most like giving up and dying.

“American Primitive” by William Jay Smith

            This poem has three stanzas with four lines in each stanzas making it a quatrain. There is an a,b,a,b rhyme scheme. There is a very strong simile Smith uses that I think defines the whole poem which is “And I love my Daddy like he loves his Dollar”. This shows the importance money is to this boy’s father. In the second stanza when he says “His lips are blue, and his hands feel cold” it seems like his father is disconnected with emotion by seeing him as “cold”. I also noticed that dollar was capitalized which gives it even more importance. The imagery used to describe the father shows how wealthy he is with his “stovepipe hat” and “handsome collar”; the reader would be able to tell by the imagery alone that the man is rich. Some children may have resentment toward a parent for being so obsessed with money but this child seems to be very proud of it.  

This poem has 2 stanzas with 8 lines in each stanza. There is an interesting rhyme scheme of a,a,b,a,a,b,a,a. There are three rhyming couplets in each stanza. Yost also uses alliteration: “living linen”, “warp, weave”, “tightly-twisted thin”, “spoken to silken to spool” and “skin to skein to skin”. This poem is comparing different aspects of linen and to people/skin. The poem also has a sexual connotation when it says “bone weft, pull of masculine into feminine. I think the second stanza is talking about things we say to persuade people maybe even in a sexual way. He compares that persuasion to “yarns” and uses similes saying they are “like wool”, “like will, like has been”. He also says those words are “spoken to silken – to spool”, which gives me the feeling that they are just said to influence a person. He compares people to “thick bolts of linen”. I also get the feeling of the sexual connotation because of the last line, “skin to skein to skin.”, because it is talking about two different things (cloth and skin) becoming intertwined. The tone seems to be almost seductive. When I read it aloud most of the stressed words were the first and last words in the lines. Yost also personifies things such as “bone weft”, because obviously bones can not weave or be weaved.

            This poem is only one stanza, it is very brief and has five lines (cinquain). Even though Bly uses simple adjectives such as cold, snowy, and deserted, to describe things, there is still a huge presence of imagery. Since his words were so direct it was easy to picture everything and feel the things he writes about such as: “As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron”. The mailbox is given a bad connotation because “cold iron” does not sound very welcoming or joyful. Even with all the cold imagery Bly creates a warm feeling in his poem when he talks about how he loves this privacy when the town is deserted.

“Embrace” by Billy Collins

            Collins turns a silly gesture of embracing yourself to make it look like you are kissing to a somewhat scary thing of being fitted for a straight jacket. What really stuck out to me in this poem was the way Collins looked at both sides of an action: “from the back it looks like someone is embracing you” then later, “from the front it is another story…your crossed elbows and screwy grin”. He not only writes about the 2 sides of a person’s actions, but what could be happening in the persons head mentally (having to get a straight jacket). The last line of the poem I think is the most important and meaningful line, “one that would hold you really tight”. It appears that he is talking about the straight jacket but there is that idea of one holding you tight, like when you embrace yourself like the person was doing in the beginning.

            There are four stanzas, generally with 4 lines in each stanza (quatrain). Crane uses several metaphors in this poem: “There are no stars tonight but those of memory” (comparing stars to memories), “Yet how much room for memory there is in the loose girdle of soft rain” (comparing her room for memories to a loose girdle), “It is all hung by invisible white hair” (this may be cutting it close to a metaphor but it is comparing the grandmothers white hair to the great care you have to take when looking at her old letters), “Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand” (comparing the music she plays to a hand). There are also a couple of similes used: “And liable to melt as snow” and “It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air”.  There is a rhyming couplet in the last stanza, “Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand Through much of what she would not understand”. I think when he says “much of what she would not understand”, he means that the world has changed, and maybe the grandmother who is older and who has been deceased would not understand the world today. Crane uses personification when saying “pitying laughter”. This poem took me a few re-reads until I got the gist of it, but overall I liked it, I thought the tone was very peaceful and a little sullen at the same time.

“Fog” By Carl Sandberg

            Sandberg is personifying the fog as a person, or living creature, when he says “It sits looking over harbor and city”. The imagery of the fog really sets the tone of the poem, making it gloomy and ominous at the same time. The line breaks in this poem are also interesting like other poems I have read and enjoyed, the lines end with the reader asking a question such as: “The fog comes” – the fog comes where? “on little cat feet”. I still can’t figure out what the relationship between the fog and the cat feet though. Although the actual text of the poem is brief I think it talks about a great amount. It makes the reader envision so many things like the looming fog, harbor, city, etc.

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

            This poem has an a,b,a,a,b which is a little unusual but it reads nicely. There are four stanzas in a cinquain form. This poem is very symbolic because it is about choices, and not actually about the choice between two literal roads. I think that Frost is saying how he could’ve taken a typical, ordinary path in life, but instead he took “the one less traveled by”. The two roads could be symbolizing many different choices in life such as a career or a certain life style. I think he is saying that the choice he made was not a practical choice but he is happy he took it because it “has made all the difference”. I think the connotation in this poem is good because Frost seems to be thankful of the path he chose in life. To me, this poem follows a general anapestic beat when I read it aloud.

“Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount, Keep Time with My Salt Tears” by Ben Johnson

            This poem has one stanza with eleven lines. The rhyme scheme is a bit inconsistent but interesting, it starts off as a,b,a,b then goes into a, a, a, b, b (rhyming couplet), c, b. Johnson describes crying using a lot of imagery and metaphors. The first line, and title, is a metaphor; he is comparing the “fresh fount” to a persons eyes, with the salt tears because like water coming out of a fountain. The last line is also a metaphor, “Since nature’s pride is now a withered daffodil”, comparing natures pride (people?) to a withered daffodil. Johnson also displays personification with “woe weeps”, because obviously “woe” can not weep. He uses alliteration when saying, “slow, slow”, “fresh fount”, and “woe weeps”.