"O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!O the bleeding drops of red,Where on the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;O captain! dear father!This arm beneath your head;It is some dream that on the deck,You've fallen cold and dead.


My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!But I, with mournful tread,Walk the deck my captain lies,Fallen cold and dead."

I believe that this poem has to do with death. A crew and their captain had just returned from a fearsome and trying voyage at sea successfully. The narrator is overjoyed to finally be home, and calls out to the captain. But alas, the captain has perished. He's dead. There's traces of blood, and his body is cold. Because the poem says "fallen", I feel as if the captain may have been murdered or had committed suicide. Of course, with poetry, it could also mean that he had lost himself on the journey and was lifeless in the terms of his personality. Although the crowd and the narrator were "exulting", and absolutely joyous with their return, there is a sense of sorrow because the captain was no longer with them.

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

I absolutely love this quote. It's amazing, and I find that it rings true to the core. And it's context makes it infinitely more profound and meaningful. These boys are very uptight about school, and their study bones are rigid in place. But Mr. Keating is giving them a lesson through the quote. Sure, being a lawyer or an engineer is a great and respectable thing that society needs to function properly, but it's not really necessary for the human soul. For a person to really live, they need a little something more. Passion. Mr. Keating tells us that poetry is to be respected and lived, not for a reason like school, or simply "because it's cute." And as humans, we ought to know that. Everyone needs a little bit of passion in their lives, and they certainly need a way to express it.

This came out much more depressing as I wanted it to be. In fact, it wasn't supposed to be depressing at all, but it just ended up like that. My poem is about how everyone has choices they can make, especially

I believe that this poem has to do with emotions rather than physical seasons. To me, it seems like the poets is recounting a love story of his. He met a woman (presumably), and fell in love with her. The first verse talks about how his feelings were in full bloom. The green leaves in spring. By the second verse, the love has taken him completely, and has developed into a passion. The verse indicates passion and innocence by the colors red and white, and the beauty of his lover that he noticed from first sight. He has fallen head over heels in love with her. The third verse show us how his love is too immense to show with words, and how much it’s impossible to describe. But the last verse however, shows us how their love has broken apart. She has left him, and he wishes she would return. The “dove” in the poem is the lover. The first three verses talk about how she is beautiful and that her love and herself are golden. The last verse tells us how the dove is gone, and that the love or the woman is broken. She has been lost to him, and he wishes she would come back. 

I think that this poem had to do with the pressures of society. Especially if one lives in a city that has no ends to responsibilities you have to take on. The line where the children come in is where we get to see that he's remembering how children are free of such duties and responsibilities that weigh him down. He wants to be a child like that again. Similarly, the moon-bird represents him, I think. Where the moon-bird can go to rest his wings is a place where his worries are gone. He wants to go to a place where he has freedom to be what he wants to be, and do what he wants to do, instead of having to conform to society. 

My mom dropped my off at school
Just like she did every morning.
The smell of rain on the grass,
Droplets skittering to the ground,
I made my way to the fields
Where my friends stood every day.
This time wasn't just my friends.

A giant mob of children
Laughing
Jeering
Squealing
Pointing
At something on the damp ground.
A great big, thick as my thumb,
Long as my forearm (a bit less)
Huge and ginormous, earthworm.

My teacher walked towards us,
A long stick held in her right hand.
Kids parted like the Red Sea
Around Moses as she approached
And we stared and stared and stared.

Not even one word uttered,
She picked the worm up on her stick
Watched it slime all over it
Then chucked it over the fence
And into the neighbouring park.

Alliteration: When the beginning of two or more words have the same sound. E.g. many things/ like movies

Untitled Poem
If gloomy thoughts were rifle shots
my mind would be at
civil war.
-Anonymous

The Three Oddest Words 
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.
-Wislawa Szymborska

Love is More Thicker Than Forget
Love is more thicker than forget
More thinner than recall
More seldom than a wave is wet
More frequent than to fail

It is most mad and moonly
And less it shall unbe
Than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

Love is less always than to win
Less never than alive
Less bigger than the least begin
Less littler than forgive

Is is most sane and sunly
And more it cannot die
Than all the sky which only
Is higher than the sky
- E.E. Cummings

I actually really enjoy poetry, but I despised it until about the seventh or eighth grade. Poetry was drab to me, seeing as none of it really spoke or connected to me. When someone said "poetry", the first thing I would think of was those boring poems that we were required to learn in class. I never got to enjoy poetry in class, because we don't read it, we dissect and analyze and over think it. I also disliked poetry because if it's long, it's a bother to read. There's a certain rhythm to all poetry, and if the rhythm is slow but long, it's quite frankly annoying to have to read through. It gets frustrating because if you break the rhythm, you have to start reading it again from the beginning.

I'm rather fond poetry now, especially because I'm at the age where I can appreciate it. I love how poems can be brief but strong, and really meaningful to a person. Good poetry speaks to a person, and it becomes a piece of them. It's easier to relate yourself to a poem than a book too, because a poem is short and sweet. It's almost like the lazy but not lazy at all way to convey a message or feeling or idea. I like how poetry can be funny or sad or happy or mysterious, or all of those at once. I like how all the right words have been selected or picked out to give to the mood. Poetry is the perfect way to music and literature combined.

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come: 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 
- William Shakespeare

I think that this sonnet is talking about a true love. The love will never waver or die and will stand strong until the end of time. However, the poet says that he might be wrong, because no man has ever loved like that. I feel like the poem presents a quite sweet and loving message, but the end is a bit deflating. I guess I do like this one. It's really heart-warming, but the end is appreciated because I regard it as the truth. At least, the truth as far as I know now. 

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: 
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
- William Shakespeare

I think that this sonnet is also another love poem. This one talks about how the poet's lover is as beautiful as a summer's day, but even better. Her beauty is eternal and she is mild and amazing. This also is giving a sweet and loving feeling. The emotions are definitely love and awe and admiration and appreciation for the poet's lover. This is a really nice poem that I like a lot, and have liked for a long time. It's a poem that paints a picture in your mind- and not just one picture. You see pictures of the perfect summer day, and you start to picture the person that this poem is written about. I think it's applicable to most people on this earth because everyone's liked another at some point in their lives, even if it's not in a romantic way. 

Sonnet XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity. 
- Elizabeth Barret Browning

To me, this sonnet is about a person who wants to be loved for him or herself. She (let's just say it's a she because the poet is a she) says that it's better to be loved truly for love, and not because the other person feels required to or because of one aspect of her. It's rather sad, but hopeful and sincere, and I like that. It's real. It's not something that over-glorifies love, and it's a lesson that some people might need.  

Sonnet (Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now)

Women have loved before as I love now
At least, in lively chronicles of the past--
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast
Much to their cost invaded—here and there,
Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest,
I find some woman bearing as I bear
Love like a burning city in the breast.
I think however that of all alive
I only in such utter, ancient way
Do suffer love; in me alone survive
The unregenerate passions of a day
When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread,
Heedless and willful, took their knights to bed. 
- Edna St Vincent Millay

I think that this sonnet has to do with one of the emotions that are connected to love. It's not just love, but also lust I think, that's in this poem. The poem is about how it's not only the poet who feels like she does, but it's women everywhere and everywhen. She travels back into history to examine the emotion. It's raw and elegant at the same time. The poem is like an evil queen falling in love. So in conclusions, I like it. This sonnet has a different feeling from the others, because it's a bit more... grungier? I'm not sure how to define it, but it leaves a bittersweet (but mostly bitter) taste in your mouth because it's so raw and straight-forward.