The Snow Man

      This poem by Wallace Stevens is very descriptive and visual.  To do this he uses a lot of imagery.  Stevens says, "Spruces rough in the distant glitter,"  This allows the reader to easily see what he is talking about especially if you are familiar with this winter setting.  There is also personification to help the reader see the visual aspects of this poem.  "Of any misery in the sound of the wind," says Stevens.  Giving that human emotion of misery to the sound of the wind helps to imagine what it is like to be there.  This poem is easier to understand as long as the reader has lived or visited a place which has this cold, winter look and feel to it.  If a person has never seen anything like it, it may be more difficult to picture.  Stevens has a very strong emphasis in using imagery and personification for the reader to see what is in the poem.

The Possibility

            This is a poem that seems to talk about a few different subjects but ties them all together.  James Fenton uses personification, similes, and rhyming in this poem.  His use of personification is more subtle that it is often seen in other poems.  Fenton used it while talking about the lizard, "engrossed," and "telling," are some of the words he used to describe the actions of the lizard.  To use a simile he says, "It opened like a crimson hand," while talking about the flower.  Lastly he uses rhyming throughout.  Words such as, "wood, good, be, me, strong and wrong," are all used effectively because they have the rhyming sound to them while still adding to the poem and this still gets his point across.

Plans for Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I'm going to San Diego.
Flying by myself, I will meet my family there,
Upon seeing the ocean, I will stop and stare.

California is my birth place,
Running a 5K race, setting a pace.
Watching football, and the sun set,
On the beach near the inlet.

The Thanksgiving meal will be like what most people have,
Turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, sweet potatoes,
And most importantly, pie.

Toads

       This poem by Philip Larkin, he uses toads as a interesting and clever way to talk about people.  The metaphor in the poem is the toad.  To explain the connection between a person and a toad he uses personification.  Larkin uses frog words such as, "squats," and "it's sickening poison."  He then relates this back to humans working to pay the bills, and provide for their family.  He then uses alliteration of multiple "L" words.  "Lectures, lispers, losels, loblolly-men, loughts."  Not only is this difficult to say, it causes the reader to think about these strange sounding words and what they mean.  This can capture the reader's attention, and makes this poem stand out more due to it being about toads and having funny sounding words.

Vergissmeinnicht

The title Vergissmeinnicht is German for "forget-me-not." This relates to the poem because it is talking about war, soldiers, life and death.  It also has quite a bit of figurative language. I first noticed the use of rhyming, shown throughout the poem, such as, "paid, decayed and mingled, shingled." There was also some use of personification. When the author Kieth Douglas says, "The frowning barrel of his gun," it gives the human characteristic of frowning to an inanimate object. Another thing I noticed was his use of similes. Douglas compares, "my tank with one like the entry..." and also, "burst stomach like a cave." These comparisons using the word, "like," give examples for the reader to better understand the poem.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

         This poem by Walt Whitman is a unique and different topic for a poem.  Talking about a spider is a metaphor to a human in the poem as a whole.  When he talks about building a web, he compares it to building a bridge along with exploring, "oceans of space."  I also noticed the structure of the poem.  It has two stanzas, but only two sentences, one in each stanza which each sentence is only broken up by commas.  Alliteration is used in both stanzas.  When he says, "forth filament, filament, filament, filament..." he also used it in the second stanza with repeating the words, "Till the..."  This poem has various types of figurative language in which the author used it effectively to relate the comparison of the spider to human behaviors and characteristics.   

For the Sleepwalkers

    I found this poem interesting that the author would write an entire poem about sleepwalking.  This is a somewhat funny topic and I have slept-walk many times.  In his poem he often says,"we are leaving our bodies."  This is a different way of looking at sleepwalking because there isn't much control to it.  There must be some thought put into sleepwalking.  He says,"the worn path that leads to the stairs instead of the window."  That shows we are still thinking even though we don't seem to have any control of it.  He uses some alliteration during the poem when he says, "We have to learn," a couple times and he also uses other words such as, "our, darkness, and so much."  This poet displays his respect for sleepwalkers and how they do it in a kind of comical way.