Poem I want to Perform

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Author: Robert Frost

Seize the Day analysis

There were many words and sentences that stood out to me in the poem called Seize the Day. I really liked this poem because of the message that is sent especially to younger people. Through life, we don't always stop and look around at our surroundings. We are always on a schedule and we are all worried about our futures and trying to make sure we go to college and have a successful career. Some of the lines in this poem really represent this. One of the lines is "remember this day is a gift." This line makes you realize that life is short and that we should remember that we are lucky to be living on this earth. It is hard sometimes to remember this because there are bad days sometimes, but even these days are gifts because it helps us to be better people. I think that sometimes we forget to remember that we are lucky. I also liked like the words gold or fame. These words are what everyone thinks about in life. Everyone is so focused on making money because a lot of people do not see past money and riches. Fame is another thing that people care too much about. Even if it doesn't mean that your famous, people worry about being popular and a lot of people are also obsessed with being "internet famous." I know that life seems better when people are rich and famous but, the important thing to remember is that we need to focus on the people who we are around such as your family or your friends. The quality of people around somebody helps to shape his or her personality. In the beggining of the poem I really like the parts where they would talk about appreciating the goods thing about life, but it also says to appreciate the things wrong about life like the "fly that irks you." The common theme of this poem is to appreciate life and the things that are both good and bad about it. I found it interesting the parts about the water. I never thought about bathing in that way as if it was actually cleansing everything about you. I feel like it was saying that people should cleanse themselves of the things they have done in the past they regret. The importance of this is because if you cleanse yourself or what you have done in the past, then you can focus on the present situation like taking a deep breath of air when you wake up.  Enjoying the little things in life make you life happier and healthier. Appreciating your family and friends who around to support you is something that should be done every day. The parallel to that in the poem is when it says to pray and talk to your ancestors. I feel like talking to you family falls under that category. All of these things I feel are somewhat easy to see in the poem because there is so many things that talk about enjoying life.

Seize the Day Reflections

In class we performed the poem "Seize the Day." We were able to adapt it in anyway that we wanted to and we had a wide variety of options to choose from in terms of performing this poem. In my group, we wanted to show the comparison between a rich person and a poor person. Lesley was the rich girl and Josh was the poor boy. The reason why we did this was because we wanted to show that life is the same for everyone. Everyone lives and everyone dies. We switched back and for between two sides of the stage because we wanted to show the separation between the two worlds. But by the last two stanzas of the poem, the stage was completely lit and we could see both worlds collide together. Looking back on our performance I felt like we did a good job coming up with an idea. There was a lot of ideas that were thrown around within the group. When I was watching the performance it went the way that I thought it would go. The staging was very successful and the music that was picke out was a good fit for our performance. Personally, I messed up with the spashinsh words accept they were translated to English. In the video you can hear me talk when I should not have. It helped me to explore the words of the poem because we wanted to incorporate movements and lighting into out performance. I think this also helped me to think of ideas quickly because we had limited time to put this performance together.

I felt like every group that I watched had a different idea. None of them were really the same. Although, it was common for most groups to have everyone read a part of the poem. I really liked the direction that Nan's group went in by making a song out of the poem. I really found it interesting that Nan would sing the same lines throughout the performance and Jamaal, Jack and Ivan would read different parts. Their performance was unique because it was a song. I was also interested in what Jacob's group did by walking in circles. I feel like the closest one to my groups was Jamsines group because they did movements correlating to the words being read.

Nan's groups strengths was that they sang and rapped the poem which made it interesting. The weaknesses was that I couldn't hear some of the people in the performance. Yun's groups strengths was that they were at a slow pace and it was easy to follow. The weakness was that for a lot of the performance they walked back and forth across the bridge. The strengths for Jacobs group was that it was fast pace however the weakness was that it was too fast to follow almost. Cassidy's groups strengths were that they had a very simple performance. However their weakness was that it was maybe too simple for the poem. Jasmine's groups strengths were that they had some good body movements in their performance. However, their weakness was that they started to laugh and lose their composure but hey got it together and were able to finish the performance.

500 Words poem analysis

Poetry blog post #1 due Saturday by midnight -- choose any poem from the ones posted on the class blog (or Seize the Day from the handout) and analyze 1) how it works, and 2) what it means. 500 words.

The Poem That I chose to write about: 

Title: Are You Ready?

It was like every other day coming home from school
Little did I know that life was about to be cruel
My parents were sitting in the living room
I wondered why
But I would find out soon

When the word cancer is mentioned you shutter
I asked my parents who had it with a stutter
Your five year old cousin Will
I suddenly felt a chill

How could a boy so young and pure
Have a rare cancer without a proven cure
I can not answer this question
Life taught me an important lesson

Live each day like its your last
Think about the future and how you can right your wrongs in the past
Because life comes at you fast

And one day you might not be ready
For the hard truth that makes you nervous and sweaty
And when it hits you
It's very heavy

And I can tell you now
That I wasn't ready
For the hard truth
That made me nervous and sweaty

Will you be ready?


The poem that I decided to analyze was my own poem that I wrote at the Hip-Hop Poetry event that happened at school. The reason why I chose to analyze my own poem is because it really means a lot to me and I understand the back story and deeper meaning to the poem. So first looking at the poem it has 7 stanzas total and it has 25 lines. I did not use any type of pattern for lines and I broke the stanzas when it felt right to separate them and also sometimes when I change subjects for what I want to talk about in the poem. I tried to keep the lines as close together as possible because I didn't want the reader to forget about the rhyme that I was trying to incorporate into the poem. So the rhyme scheme was basically AABB. Sometimes there would be three lines in a stance and they would all rhyme together or there was five lines and two would rhyme and three would rhyme. Those two would looke like AAA and AABBB. One of the things that stands out in the poem is the last line. This is the one line with punctuation in the poem and it is also only one line. The reason why this line is so important is because I wanted to let the reader think about their own lives and reflect on themselves.
The meaning of the poem is very personal to me and my family. Basically my cousin was diagnosed with cancer and he is not doing very well now. This came to me to write about this in the Hip-Hop poetry meeting because we were asked to write about something that makes me upset. Possibly losing a family member to a horrible disease makes me angry inside and I wanted to write this because I want people to know that live shouldn't be taken for granted. One of the lines says  to "live each day like it's your last." I wanted people to hear this because sometimes we get caught up in the daily life that has no time to actually look around and see your surroundings until something bad hits you and then you see what you used to have. When people recognize what they have and they are greatful for what they have, then life will feel more satisfying. As the saying goes, life will slap you out of
nowhere. I wanted to let people know that life is a very sensitive thing and making the right descisions will make you feel more comfortable about yourself when it is coming to an end, that you knew that you lived your life right. In the beginning of the poem I wanted to show that it was just like any other day and them all of a sudden you hear something that takes your breath away and this can go either way. It can be a good thing or bad. Cherish the good moments and remember the bad because those make the good moments that much better.

Hip Hop Poetry

Title: Are You Ready

It was like every other day coming home from school
Little did I know that life was about to be cruel
My parents were sitting in the living room
I wondered why
But I would find out soon

When the word cancer is mentioned you shutter
I asked my parents who had it with a stutter
Your five year old cousin Will
I suddenly felt a chill

How could a boy so young and pure
Have a rare cancer without a proven cure
I can not answer this question
Life taught me an important lesson

Live each day like its your last
Think about the future and how you can right your wrongs in the past
Because life comes at you fast

And one day you might not be ready
For the hard truth that makes you nervous and sweaty
And when it hits you
It's very heavy

And I can tell you now
That I wasn't ready
For the hard truth
That made me nervous and sweaty

Will you be ready?

Reading Notes 29-34

• aliliteration-strictly speaking is the repetition of the initial sound of words in a line or live verse.
• sometimes alliteration includes the repetition of both initial sounds.
• assonance- the repetition of vowel sounds within words in a line or lines of verse.
• Onomonopoeia- is the use of a word that through its sound as well as its sense represents what it defines.

This is Just to Say poem reflection

The backstory of this poem is about someone who ate the plums that were for breakfast. Some of he words that stand out to me are icebox, sweet, and cold. I can imagine the person who was saving them was angry at the person who ate them because they did not ask to eat the plums. I'm not sure what this poem really means.

35-75 Reading Notes

• turning the line
• each line of a poem can be broken down into feet and into stresses to reveal the pattern
• scansion
• iambic foot
• five iambic feet create an iambic pentameter
• most widely used line in English metrical verse
• tetrameter(4 foot)
• shorter ones makes reader pay more attention
• free form poems
• constancy
• Variation
• Wakes up the reader
• Dactyl
• Anapest
• Caesura
• The beginning of the line and the end of the line
• End most important
• Beginning second most important
• True rhyme
• Turning the line
• Conclusion
• Poems require a design
• Length, breath, rhyme
• The Stanza
• Syllabic Verse
• Free Verse
• Tone and Content

Reading Notes 19-28

• poems require sounds
• sounds differ from each other
• dingdong theory
• vowels perform a perfect sound
• W and y are sometimes a vowel
• Semivowel- sounded with a vowel
• Mutes- cannot be sounded without a word