My Reflection Of Poetry

After exploring poetry this semester, I realized that although I still enjoy reading it for the pleasure it gives me, there is no much more to it. It is far more complex than I imagined. Some of the poems I really had to work at to understand what the poet was trying to say. Now that I have studied some older poetry written in the 1800 and early 1900s, I see that poetry can be even more complex than a novel or a short story because it is compacted into smaller parts and therefore each word carries more meaning. With a story, one is focused less on the parts but rather on the story as a whole. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost really left me thinking. Upon first reading the poem, I came away with the view that it was about a guy choosing

Although it is not an emotional love poem, I still enjoyed reading it because of it fierce and powerful language. Basically it is about a son who upon seeing his father on his deathbed implored him to fight against dying. He speaks of all the ways men who are dying should fight against it and not go gentle into the good night. They should fight until the bitter end and refuse to give in no matter how difficult it may be. In the last stanza of the poem he writes, “And you, my father, there on the sad height, curse bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.” Those two lines were the most emotional for me because it brings back the memories and moments of my grandmothers death. My grandmother had a stroke and though the doctors tried to save her she was unable to communicate with us. I knew there was little time left and that she could not recover from the stroke, however I still wanted her to fight to stay in this world. Although I did not want her to feel any pain, I could not bear the thought of losing her. I believe that’s the sentiment Dylan Thomas expressed in the poem. It’s heartbreaking to watch someone you love die and you want them to fight, to “Rage, rage against the dying of the

It’s a simple poem and it’s also not about my favorite theme of love poems, however it’s a subject that grabbed my interest. The theme of the poem is racism and how it can effect one person more then one can imagine. Whether it be a good incident or a bad one as in this case, it shows how something as ordinary as a bus trip can have lasting effects. It tells the story of a young African American boy traveling on a bus in Baltimore who upon seeing a boy his own age, wants to connect with him. He smiles at this other boy and is greeted with ugliness. The other boy sticks out his tongue and calls him a “nigger.” This incident left a mark on him for he could not shake what happened to him. His trip was ruined because of the disrespect of another little boy. It saddened me that his memory from the bus had such an effect on him. I thought this was a very thought provoking poem on how our actions can effect others. It reinforced my views that poetry is an art. If a poet can make us feel, make us empathize with them, then they have reached their goal. This is exactly what Countee Cullen did for