First Lesson by Philip Booth

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I'll tell you:


Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.


It's had tacks in it,


And splinters,


And boards torn up,                                                                


And places with no carpet on the floor --


Bare.


But all the time


I'se been a-climbin' on,


And reachin' landin's,                                                             

And turnin' corners,


And sometimes goin' in the dark


Where there ain't been no light.


So boy, don't you turn back.


Don't you set down on the steps
                                           

'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.


Don't you fall now --


For I'se still goin', honey,


I'se still climbin',


And life for me ain't been no crystal stair                               

 1. This poem is about a mother explaining to her son how life will not be easy but we should never turn back or give up.

2. A harsh, rough, dark staircase that is challenging to climb.

3. It shows how life isn't a beautiful crystal stair case but a bare splintery path. I find these images very effective because it shows a comfortable way through life in which we all dream of and the harsh reality we wake up to each passing day.

4. The images depict splintery, dark, bare passages. I think these images work well to describe the life in which we all live in.

5. The mother sees life as a harsh hell that she lives in. She does not however describe the good things about life only the bad.

6. The mother is trying to show the son how life is all unicorns and rainbows but can be a stressful hellhole at times.

7."life for me ain't been no crystal stair"

8. A stairway.

9. The language is in a southern accent which I like because the author is providing a realism to the way he  "speaks" in the poem.

10. The author affected the poem by writing in his accent.

The Day

On that early saturday morning
I looked upon your face for the first time
Your little arms and legs thrashing from side to side
A combination of all that is good
And inside that day I broke

You killed what I was
But brought out what I am
An ever watchful guardian
By just existing I knew
That from that day on I would love you child

That empty space filled
With a new purpose and reason for being
I was with you that day
And until death take me away
By god I will never leave you

The will to crush all that threaten you
The will to accept the most excruciatingly painful fate
To protect you, my baby, my child, my daughter
From that day on no matter the condition or cost
When you need me...

I'll be here.

Father’s Day and Mother’s Day

By Catherine Lim

Today is Father’s Day

His turn to visit me.

Last week was Mother’s.

I hope it will be all right

Today.

It wasen’t all right last week.

So later Mother said,

“Why didn’t you tell me

He was coming?”

She slammed out

As he came in.

And Father said,

“Why didn’t you tell me

She was coming?”

But he didn’t slam out,

He still held me close.

So now they’re properly marked on the calendar,

Father’s Days and Mother’s Days,

So there won’t be any more confusion,

The telephone helps, thank God;

I never forget to ring Mother

To tell her of Father’s Day;

And I never forget to ring Father

To tell him of Mother’s Day;

So that they will never, will never

Have to look at each other again.

And reproach me

For my neglect

Father’s Day

Mother’s Day

How can they be

Days of celebration?

the fire
by Cyril Wong
Mother cried softly
to herself afterwards,
while sister pretended

nothing was happening
and dumped her boyfriend
on the phone

while I sat before
the computer and built
a poem like a fire.

first stoking, then rising
to enter it, while father
fled this burning house

like an arsonist

1. Like "Mothers Day And Fathers Day" this poem had a vague and misleading title which in this case was a good thing. I like these kinds of titles because they make the readers interested and wanting to know more about the poem itself. This poem is very symbolic and serious and in a way disturbed the readers and left an impact which, in my opinion is what a poem should do.

2. The extended metaphor in this poem describes how the father is the arsonist causing problems within the family. He leaves the mother crying, the sister in a bad mood, and the author frustrated. The fathers effects spread like a fire burning and eating at everyone in the house. "while father fled this burning house like an arsonist".

Catrin

By Gillian Clarke

I can remember you, child,

As I stood in a hot, white

Room at the window watching

The people and cars taking

Turn at the traffic lights.

I can remember you, our first

Fierce confrontation, the tight

Red rope of love which we both

Fought over. It was a square

Environmental blank, disinfected

Of paintings or toys. I wrote

All over the walls with my

Words, coloured the clean squares

With the wild, tender circles

Of our struggle to become

Separate. We want, we shouted,

To be two, to be ourselves.

Neither won nor lost the struggle

In the glass tank clouded with feelings

Which changed us both. Still I am fighting

You off, as you stand there

With your straight, strong, long

Brown hair and your rosy,

Defiant glare, bringing up

From the heart's pool that old rope,

Tightening about my life,

Trailing love and conflict,

As you ask may you skate

In the dark, for one more hour.

1.    number.

The language and structure amplified the emotions that the author is trying to express in this poem. It makes the poem harder to understand but makes the reader appreciate this poem a lot more. The author used the elements of poetry well and entertained all of the readers. 

Ode to Family Photographs by Gary Soto

This is the pond, and these are my feet.
This is the rooster, and this is more of my feet.

Mama was never good at pictures.

This is a statue of a famous general who lost an arm,
And this is me with my head cut off.

This is a trash can chained to a gate,
This is my father with his eyes half-closed.

This is a photograph of my sister
And a giraffe looking over her shoulder.

This is our car's front bumper.
This is a bird with a pretzel in its beak.
This is my brother Pedro standing on one leg on a rock,
With a smear of chocolate on his face.

Mama sneezed when she looked
Behind the camera: the snapshots are blurry,
The angles dizzy as a spin on a merry-go-round.

But we had fun when Mama picked up the camera.
How can I tell?
Each of us is laughing hard.
Can you see? I have candy in my mouth.

On Turning Ten by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

My Life

           after Henri Michaux

Joe Wenderoth

Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since then I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this

1. The poem I like is turning on ten which depicts a darker way of looking at adolescence.

2. A boy describing how his life was once happy and childish but soon as he turned ten turned into a dark miasma of despair.

3. I like this poem because like the boy I miss the days when I was a happy child. Now life is a heavy burden which I much drag around with me.

4. He not only made us imagine his pain in our minds but he cleverly used his words to get us to feel his agony.

5. Honestly, there is no clever way to deal with growing up you just do whatever helps you get through it whether that be looking upon adolescence in a cheerful way or an unhappy way.


Never again

Never again will I feel the spray of the ocean water on my face
from my pirate ship sailing through the seas
Instead I will walk on molten ash with chains and dirt removing my grace
and feel the fiery stinging of the whips of responsibility on my back

Never again will I run through the fields accompanied by the suns warmth
and swim by the nearby stream of innocence
Instead I will freeze in deep empty soulless space not able to go forth
while the snakes poison me with their venom of hatred

Never again will I fear the monster
cowering in a corner whining for my parents
Instead I am the monster
lurking in the shadows with an unquenchable thirst for blood

Never again will I play
surrounded by happiness and joyful endings
Instead I will think thats it a waste of time to play
and slowly, little by little I will never again....

Be me.

“Adolescence is a period of great solitude, and a period where you don’t know where you’re going, what choices you want and make…you don’t know who you are going to become yet…” – Sandra Cisneros

Adolescence is not a period of solitude, it is the time in our lives in which we make the friends, choices, and memories that will soon enough define who we are. We don't have to worry about who we will become because we are already transforming into the men and women we are destined to be. Right now during our adolescent years we are deciding who we wan't to be our only concern right now is making the right choices.