"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" By:Dylan Thomas

This poem, about death is telling those who are dying to fight death and to not give up easily. The speaker says to live your life to the fullest and to "rage" against death or "the dying of the light." In the line, "old age should burn and rave at close of day," the speaker is saying that when a person grows older, they are fighting everyday against death and should live out their last days and life so they can be happy. The different stanzas speak of different situations and people who are close to death. The speaker tells the people not to let in to death and "rage against the dying of the light." The light is symbolic of the end of life. When the "light" dies, the person's life has ended. In the end, the speaker incorporates his own personal experience with death, telling his father to "not go gentle into that good night." He prays that his father keeps fighting death.

"Delight in Disorder" By: Robert Herrick

The title of this poem essentially captures the entire theme of the poem. The speaker talks of all of the disorder in life and says how his art is disorder. The broken rhyme scheme and oxymoron's help incorporate disorder into the structure and language of the poem. The oxymoron's in the poem include "wild civility", "fine distraction," and "flow confusedly." I agree with the speaker of this poem. I would take disorder over perfection any day. The world is made for disorder as almost nothing is perfect. Their is disorder with nature, disorder in houses, and disorder when there are wrecks. Disorder is a natural event and without it, the world would not be the same.

"Edward" By:Anonymous

While reading this poem, I was unsure of what it was about at first. I believed that the central theme was death because at first, I thought Edward had killed all three of the things. Through discussion, I realized that this poem is a conversation between Edward and his mother and his mother is questioning him about his "sword" that "drip(s) with blood." He first says that he killed his hawk, but his mother calls him out on his lie. Next, he claims he killed his steer," but his mother also knows this is a lie. Finally Edward admits to killing his father. I found it odd that the mother was not upset or angry about her son killing her husband. Through this and discussion I came to the conclusion that Edward's mother knew that he was going to kill his father. She even went as far as to give him "counsels." I realized that the central theme of this poem was greed and death. The mother was greedy and wanted the money that she knew she would get from the death of her husband, but only if her son killed him. When she finds out that he killed her husband, she asks "what will ye leave to your children and wife." She knows that if Edward doesn't leave his wife and children anything she will get the money. This poem is centered around greed and death.

"Lonely Hearts" by: Wendy Cope

While reading this poem, I noticed that every stanza was the same length and every stanza alternated endings. I associated the uniform length of every stanza with how these types of dating searches would be submitted into a magazine. Every stanza was a separate ad submitted to a newspaper in search of a date. The endings of the stanzas alternated, ending with either "Do you live in North London? Is it you?" or "Can someone make my simple wish come true?" until the last stanza which ends with both of these lines. This repetition and uniformity lead me to realize that the author is satirizing people who write in to papers in search of dates. I was also lead to believe this because the speaker only chooses people who are usually viewed as outcasts to write about, such as "gay vegetarian," "executive in search of bisexual women," "straight and solvent, attractive Jewish lady," and "Libran, inexperienced." Even if the person is not an outcast, the speaker causes them to be viewed as an outcast or as an odd person because of their uncommon or unaccepted preferences. The speaker causes the people writing the ads to sound desperate by incorporating the questions and repetition between each stanza/ad.

"The Apparition" by: John Donne

When first reading "The Apparition," I was slightly confused. Through group discussion, I realized a few things. The speaker is speaking in the future tense. He is speaking to a girl who has not yet done anything wrong to him or left him. He tells her that when she does break his heart and leave him, her next lover will not be able to shield her from his "ghost." He says that "thee...in worse arms shall see." Through this phrase, he says that no man will be as good as he was and no man will understand her like he did. This seems to be a very emotional accusation for something that has not even yet happened. It seems to me that the speaker has experienced a relationship that ended badly sometime in his past and for this reason, he cannot trust anyone.

"My mistress' eyes" by: William Shakespeare

My original thought of this poem from about line 1 to line 12 all I could think was "if this was my boyfriend and he wrote this poem about me, first I would cry, then I would dump him!" The speaker basically just writes about how his girlfriends eyes aren't as bright as the sun, her lips aren't as red as corral, and black wires grow on her hair. Basically, he writes about how imperfect and flawed she is. Unlike most love poems, he does not use cliches, instead, he uses the opposite of cliches. The speaker writes a love poem to his lover, insulting her. By the end though, he redeems himself by saying "I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare." Basically, the speaker is saying, I could say all these things about you that are untrue, but this wouldn't be expressing my true love and feelings. He is admitting that saying all of the normal cliches about women is unrealistic and just lies. He loves her enough to say that she is not perfect, but because of these imperfections, she is more rare than any other woman who is lied to by her lover. I find this to be slightly romantic. For a man to be able to share his true feelings and love with his own thoughts instead of the cheesy cliches is much more personal and heart felt.

"Crossing the Bar" by:Alfred, Lord Tennyson

In "Crossing the Bar," the narrator uses many symbols, such as "boundless deep," "the bar," "a tide," "the dark," and "Pilot." These symbols all represent different things dealing with the end life, death, and Heaven. I found this poem to be soothing because it portrays a peaceful death, with no morning, and moving on to the afterlife and God. In this poem, I found "the bar" which the speaker brings up twice to represent a point in time which when passed, a person can no longer go back. It is the point in which a person crosses from life to death. When the speaker said "I hope to see my Pilot... when I have crossed the bar," this became clear to me. I viewed the Pilot, whom the speaker "hope[s] to see...face to face," as God because of the capitalization of Pilot. I viewed the "twilight" and "evening bell" that the speaker sees before the "dark" as symbols of the white light that people often speak of seeing in near death experiences. It is God calling the speaker toward Him. The darkness is death itself. Finally, I saw "the tide" as a person's fate. The tide is always moving, smoothly and slowly. Likewise, the speaker has no control over his fate, but his ultimate fate, death is not a huge catastrophic deal, it is slow and peaceful.