The Golf Links

The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play. This poem has an interesting rhyme scheme, I don't think it's an ABAB rhyme scheme but it does rhyme. I think the poem is talking about back in the late 1800's during the Gilded Age many children would work, usually under horrible conditions and were given the jobs no one else wanted or could do. I think the poem is very literal, it depicts the children working and seeing the rich men play. It's interesting because it shows a reversed role, usually the child would be playing while the men would work.

the lesson of the falling leaves

the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves

I really liked this poem, I believe it was talking about how there's a certain magic in nature. When your appreciating the beauty of the world you just feel peaceful. I thought the structure was interesting as well, it was simple and short but it flowed well.

For A Lady I Know

She even thinks that up in heaven Her class lies late and snores, While poor black cherubs rise at seven To do celestial chores. From this poem, I pictured a young girl's ignorance to the rest of the world. I remember conjuring silly ideas of angels and heaven. My siblings would tell me they used to say when they were young that when it rained it was because the angels were taking a shower, and when they heard thunder it was because the angels were bowling, the sound the bowling ball would make when it crashed into the pins was what they compared to thunder. So for this poem I imagined a young girl imagining that an angel's life was much like her own. The black cherubs part I thought might have been a symbolism for oppression of black people, if this poem was during that time period it might be a play on how on a plantation, the white owners would sleep in while their slaves would get up early to go work.

Many red devils...

Many red devils ran from my heart And out upon the page They were so tiny The pen could mash them. And many struggled in the ink. It was strange To write in this red muck Of things from my heart. My take on this poem, was the author was feeling scorned and let all the hate and anger he was feeling leak into his writing. He compared them to red devils perhaps because he feels that those hateful words are almost a sin to be in his writing. In the third and second line from the last, it says, "It was strange to write in this red muck," so obviously the author was not accustomed to allowing anger and hate be shown in his writing. P.S. I commented on Shelby's and Ana's blog

Not Waving but Drowning

This poem had no rhyme scheme and some of it's lines didn't flow very well. Such as in the second stanza where it says, "It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,".
As for the meaning of the poem, I believe it is meaning that people sometimes try to hide the bad things in their life and make it seem like everything is okay when it's not (I think we talked about this in class). This idea is shown in the poem, especially in the first in last line, "Nobody heard him, the dead man, - And not waving but drowning." I thought the last line was interesting, it brought the visual of when you are on the beach and you see someone in the water, waving their arms, like they are sending a friendly, 'hey there' to their companions on the beach until suddenly you realize they're not actually waving their arms in greeting but in terror, asking for help because they are drowning.

Group Poem From Class

How do teachers expect students to be exceptional?
Do they care?
Why do they care?
Do they have homework?
Do they like our suffering?
Are they afraid to die?
Are they people too?
Why are there teachers?
Should they be eliminated?

Goodbye to the Old Life: Poem From Class

From Old To New: A Different School

Surrounded by the people I have grown up with
Joyful feelings for the warm season of freedom called summer
The swings we used to play on
The gravel that soaked up our blood
The memories will always be remembered

Nervousness and sorrow fill me
Faces that I do not know
I am unfamiliar with this place
But new memories will be made within these walls