Ap English Poetry Essay

The two poems “A Barred Owl” and “the history teacher” both work to show the innocence of a child, and how the characters in the poem work to try to preserve it. In the first poem by Richard Wilbur, the child is frightened by the owl’s voice. However, the child is told, “All she heard was an odd question from a forest bird….” This shows the person trying to protect the child’s innocence.

Blake describes how social hierarchy has always been in the world and that can affect our view in things.. The church officials thought the orphans would be happy serving the higher class since the church officials are servants of God and in their religion they refer to God as the most powerful being. They thought the orphans would be happy serving the higher class, and the orphans were meant to serve. Whispering words telling the orphans that if they do their duty, they would go to heaven and meet God too. The church officials thought they were better and had a better position than most people so they assumed that people should feel entitled to serve them. The speaker makes the church by saying the lines: “They clothed me in the clothes of

Billy Collins appropriately created the title “Schoolsville” for this poem. The title is broken down and is imagined by readers of a little town occupied by former students who still act as they did in high school. From the beginning line, it is clear to the reader that the speaker is reminiscing his past by “glancing over my shoulder at the past,” (Collins 534). By stating, “I realize the number of students he has taught is enough to populate a small town,” also adds to the image created by the title (Collins 534). The speaker has taught so many years that his former students could populate a town.

In WW2 the holocaust clamed 6 million Jews lives, and over 7 million soviets died too and 1.7 million of those soviets were also counted towards the 6 million Jews. The holocaust was a genocide during World War II in when Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany tried to take over then world and also attempted to kill off all the Jews. They would send Jews and people who opposed them to concentration camps where they were either durned or worked till they couldn’t. Night is an autobiography by Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. Auschwitz death camp is a video documentary with oprah winfrey and Elie Wiesel. One thought I had after learning about the holocaust was how crazy to you have to be to try to eliminate an entire religion of people.

This poem dramatizes the conflict that humans or people need one another to survive the cruel world. The title alone signifies a depressing and sad atmosphere for the poem. The speaker is unknown but they seem to have a curiosity about life while laying in bed late at night. The persona repeats “nobody / Can make it out here alone.”(9-10), trying to let mankind know that they have to change their ways of seeing life; everyone needs someone at some point in life.

Throughout the book, Baldwin uses this motif of dust as a symbol to show how John’s attempts at sanctification are futile. Several times throughout the book, John makes an effort to sanctify himself. But no matter how hard he tries, John simply cannot escape the depravity of his inescapable sin, similar to how he cannot ever seem to clean the parlor rug. From the minute John enters the church to find healing, he encounters the same dust he found in the parlor: “In the air of the church hung, perpetually, the odor of dust and sweat; for, like the carpet in his mother’s living room, the dust of this church was invincible” (49). This dust causes John to suffer further instead of leading to a resolution: “His heart told him that he had no right

Towards the beginning mankind was marked by evil. Due to Eve’s manipulation and Adam’s disobedience the human race was banished from the Kingdom of Heaven. No soul went unmarked; all were cursed to walk the earth plagued with sin. Generation upon generations later we still bear the curse mark of our ancestors. Much like Mr. Hooper from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s essay, The Minister’s Black Veil, we all wear the emblem of sin upon our face, some with shame and others with pride.

As a child, there are many things in life that your parents won’t tell you to keep your childhood sacred. The poems “The Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins show the significance of parents sometimes telling white lies to their children from knowing the harsh truth about something. Both poets use literary devices to depit scenes where adults lie with the intention of protecting children. However, whereas Wilbur uses imagery, personification, and rhyme to show a fathers soothing lie to his daughter. Collins poem relies on numerous puns, understatement and irony to show the repercussions of sheltering children from the real world.

Within the two passages given, both authors offer different approaches towards tone, use of dialogue and questions, and overall structure to illustrate the attempts of adults to preserve childhood innocence, with two very different outcomes.

The Odyssey, “Siren Song”, and Ulysses and the Sirens are pieces of work focusing on the same subject: the Sirens. These mythical creatures are massive birds with a woman’s face. They trick sailors to go overboard and then make a meal out of them. Each piece depicts the Sirens in different ways and conveys a unique tone.

Contentment is the only real wealth. Happiness is closely related to the love of family and friends. This concept is precisely proven in the poems Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giavonni and Mother to Son by Langston Hughes. Both of these poems possess similar topics, such as living in poverty as an African American. Although the themes of these poems corresponds with one another, their ideas are expressed differently by point of view and voice recognition. The theme of these poems are determination within black families. However, Mother to Son has a more effective way of relaying this point because it has a realistic approach.

Wheatley 's societal position does not hinder her ability to express how she believes the powerful undergraduates should morally conduct themselves. At the beginning of the first stanza, Wheatley underlines how writing poetry is a central component of her being. "An intrinsic ardor" (Wheatley 1), or an internal fire, compels her to write, while mythological "muses" (Wheatley 2) guide her as she pours out her emotions onto the paper. Wheatley also proclaims that she left her native Africa not long ago (Wheatley 3). In effect, Wheatley assumes the position of a foreign woman in a new, mysterious land who relies on mythological creatures to guide her creativity. However, as the poem progresses, she takes on the position of an enslaved woman attempting to break free from her chains to address individuals residing at the top of society. In the first line of the second stanza, following a break, Wheatley recognizes the immense privileges granted to the undergraduates as a result of their time spent at Harvard College when stating "Students, to you 'tis giv 'n to scan the heights" (Wheatley 7). However, through addressing the undergraduate students, Wheatley is adopting the power that the students are able to exhibit as a result of their skin color and educational background. The placement of this line at the beginning of the second stanza further highlights how Wheatley is depicting herself as an individual who is attempting to climb the ladder of society so that she can directly

Elizabeth Bishop, the writer of In The Waiting Room; written in 1976, was from Worcester, Massachusetts, the place in which the poem is set. The majority of Elizabeth Bishops poems were written based on her own experiences throughout her life, resembling somewhat how she dealt with certain experiences and her ideology about life.

mist, and is likely writing about mist in a love style of poetry. The first impressions are that this poem will likely include several metaphors about mist and will likely seem to be thoughts, and not an actual conversation or lecture. The subject of the poem is clearly going to be about mist, but it may also dig into romance, seeing as the title includes “Ahh”.

Modern poetry is in open form and free verse. It is pessimistic in tone, portraying loss in faith and psychological struggle which is quite different from the fixed forms and meters of traditional poetry. Secondly, modern poetry is fragmented in nature, containing juxtaposition, inter-textuality and allusion. It has no proper beginning, middle or end. Thirdly, modern poetry is predominantly intellectual in its appeal, rather than emotive. Fourthly, modern poetry involved symbolism, greatest example being T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats. Lastly, modern poetry is impersonal, anti-romantic, and innovative in attitude and approaches to life. It opposed to romantic poetry of spontaneity and imagination.