Acquainted With The Night

Nighttime is so mysterious and dismal, and I love that this poem is all about nighttime. There are 4 stanzas each with 3 lines, and there is a meter of aba for each stanza. The last stanza only has two lines though which makes it stand out. Also, the first and last line match exactly. This poem has a tone of somberness and scorn to it; this piece definitely doesn't have cheerfulness. I almost get a feeling of scariness like the person in the poem is under the glare of the watchman, and the scream the person hears is chilling yet the person can't say anything -almost like it's a normal, daily thing to hear. The poet talks about how "time is neither right or wrong" which kind of goes along with night because night is all the same until the sun come up, and a person can't really tell the time until the morning arrives. The lonely ally ways and the rain all make the images very dark and bleak, and that's how most people view night as-not a time to be up but instead be in slumber. I personally love the night, yet it's definitely a dark, dreary poem.

A Work of Artifice

This poem kind of looks at life with a different perspective. Instead of this tree growing strong and monstrous, the owner decides to keep it small and cozy, domestic and weak. The reader would think that a bigger tree would have more to offer such as shade and maybe a place for an animal to live. When it talks about bound feet and crippled brains and the hair in curlers, the poet is relating it to a person. Since this was written in 1936 we had just gotten out of a world war. I can't help but think that this poem is related to that time. How lucky the tree is to have a pot to grow in is one of the lines in the poem, and this probably represents the Depression in America and people got by by not making a scene and just being thankful for what they had. The hands you love to touch could be related to the greediness people had and how Americans tried to get their hands on everything they could. Just like the tree being cut down at an early age, young children had to learn to deal with what little they had at a young age. This poem must definitely represent a period of history, and it's really neat how the author compares that with a stunted tree.

Unveiling

This poem is just down right simple. The structure of it is just line after line with no stanzas and rhyming. I was able to read straight through this poem and get exactly what the poet was meaning to say. It definitely is vivid because it paints a picture of the poet's family members lined up in the graveyard just like around the dinner table. I can relate to that feeling of loneliness because after losing a loved one I felt so left behind, almost like being kept out of a secret as the poet puts it. When the writer talks about how she is not yet old enough to learn this lesson, I relate that lesson to wisdom. A person must grow old and experience more of life before a person can truly experience being "in their shoes." The appreciation of life can't truly be appreciated till a person lives life and can see life from an old person's point of view. I like how she says that she isn't sad about it and depressed but merely left out. I mean isn't that truly how we feel? Death is inevitable and happens to everyone eventually in due time. This poem kind of puts a silver lining on death in a way that I hadn't looked at before.

Wallflowers

This poem is about using unusual words in a poem and I love how the poet relates words to different places or rooms or moments in people's lives. She talks about words that are like shy shadows at a high school dance, and I really like that because words can be like that; the writer is just shy to use them. I know the feeling of learning a new word and how it makes the writer feel so much more intelligent because the writer can actually use the word in context. It's so nice to have a complex word that can describe multiple feelings. For the example the word "good" which is used over and over again, but when a new word is found to replace such a used word, it's marvelous. She relates unused words to orphan children which gives a vivid image of how words can actually feel abandoned and unused. Her imagery is very strong in this poem and gets her point across so much more clearly. This poem has five stanzas, yet there is no pattern to how many lines are in each. This structure gives the reader a more free flowing type of feel to the poem. This look into how unused words "feel" definitely painted a picture in my head and how many words are out there that I could still learn; it's very inspiring.