"The Charge of the Light Brigade" Alfred Lord Tennyson

IHalf a league, half a league,Half a league onward,All in the valley of Death   Rode the six hundred.“Forward, the Light Brigade!Charge for the guns!” he said.Into the valley of Death   Rode the six hundred.
II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
   Someone had blundered.
   Theirs not to make reply,
   Theirs not to reason why,
   Theirs but to do and die.
   Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
   Rode the six hundred.
IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
   All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
   Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
   Not the six hundred.
V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
   Left of six hundred.
VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
   All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
   Noble six hundred!

The march of the six hundred is simulated in the meter of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Written mainly in dactylic dimeter, stress is placed on the first syllable of each foot, with two feet in each line, as a general rule. The stressed syllables to begin each line create an idea for the reader that cannons or guns are being shot. Even thought this is clear, the poem continues steadily, just as the six hundred march into what is clear danger and certain death for "Theirs not to make reply,/ Theirs not to reason why,/ Theirs but to do and die." The constant nature of the poem makes for a constant, obedient, and even valiant representation of the six hundred. Along with the stressed first syllables, the anaphoric repetition at the beginning of some stanzas simulate cannon fire. “Cannon to right of them,/ Cannon to left of them,/ Cannon behind them,” it seems as though they’re being attacked from all around. The repetition continues even though it is clear that “someone had blundered.” The fact that the same structure continues helps the reader sense the ultimate obedience displayed by the soldiers, the selflessness that leads to their deaths.

"body" James Merrill

The late James Merrill was recognized as one of the leading poets of his generation. Praised for his stylish elegance, moral sensibilities, and transformation of autobiographical moments into deep and complex meditations, Merrill’s work spans genres—including plays and prose—but the bulk of his artistic expression can be found in his poetry. Merrill’s talent was recognized immediately, though his earliest work was seen as polished and technically proficient rather than deep. It was not until his themes became more dramatic and personal that he began to win serious attention and literary acclaim. Over the long course of his career, Merrill won nearly every major literary award in America.

Look closely at the letters. Can you see,
entering (stage right), then floating full,then heading off—so soon—how like a little kohl-rimmed moono plots her course from b to d

—as y, unanswered, knocks at the stage door?Looked at too long, words fail,phase out. Ask, now that body shinesno longer, by what light you learn these linesand what the b and d stood for.

In "body," Merrill uses metaphor to represent life, death, the circle that they create, and the ambiguity that leaves us asking questions. The speaker asks the reader to observe the letters that make up the word "body." Each letter is its own metaphor while a conceit representing life as a stage is also present. In its most basic form, "b" and "d" stand for birth and death with an "o" in the middle that represents the constant cycle, the circle of life. This meaning is further emphasized when the "o" is compared to "a little kohl-rimmed moon." The use of the moon to represent natural cycles, the ups and downs that we face between birth and death. Lastly the "y" seems to be left out of the enclosed system containing "bod."  This "y," taken literally can be understood as a question, "why?" This question addresses not only the circle of life, but asks what comes after death, leaving an unfinished, incomplete feeling. On a deeper level, Merrill subtly alludes to the Shakespearean idea that life is just a stage and we are merely players. Quite literally, "bod" looks like a stage while the "y" takes a back seat to all the action. Applied to today, often we get so caught up in the cycle, that is the spectacle that almost becomes a show, that we fail to ask and seek answers to some of the most pertinent "why's." The use of metaphor allows the reader to understand a commentary on life from four simple letters.

"This Is Just to Say" William Carlos Williams

This brief nature of this poem by William Carlos Williams makes poignant diction a must. The short, crisp descriptions give the reader a complete view of the instance at hand, in spite of the length. The speaker wastes no time, beginning the poem with a candid confession, "[he] has eaten the plums that were in the icebox." No excuses, just straightforward diction. This frank tone continues into the second stanza as the speaker admits to knowing those were the plums that his wife "[was] probably saving for breakfast. The tone is conveyed so clearly thanks to the diction. There are no flashy adjectives, adverbs, or other modifiers to contaminate the honest confession. The first time the audience even sees descriptive adjectives is in the last stanza, describing the plums as "delicious so sweet and so cold." This continues the honest tone as if the speaker just wants to put it all on the table; maybe if they were good enough, his eating the plums would be justified, conveying the thought that yes, eating the plums was wrong, but at least they were good. Considering the poem on the whole, the simple diction allows the reader to sympathize with the speaker. Without formal diction or syntax this poem could be coming from a little kid. The reader can easily imagine a little child coming to his mom and apologizing for such a trivial crime, yet we understand the speaker as a grown man at the same time feeling empathy towards him and understanding his justification behind his actions.  

"To a Daughter Leaving Home" Linda Pastan

Poet Linda Pastan was raised in New York City but has lived for most of her life in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. In her senior year at Radcliffe College, Pastan won the Mademoisellepoetry prize (Sylvia Plath was the runner-up). Immediately following graduation, however, she decided to give up writing poetry in order to concentrate on raising her family. After ten years at home, her husband urged her to return to poetry. Since the early 1970s, Pastan has produced quiet lyrics that focus on themes like marriage, parenting, and grief. She is interested in the anxieties that exist under the surface of everyday life. (www.poetryfoundation.org)

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

In "To a Daughter Leaving Home," Pastan's metaphor of a mother watching her daughter learn to ride a bicycle for the first time is best understood in context of situation and setting, both relatable to a high school audience and many others. While narrating a childlike and playful experience (however stressful it may be for the mother), the speaker and mother's sentiment foreshadow and represent the same anxieties and fears she'll feel when her daughter leaves the house to live on her own, just as the daughter experiences a new found sense of freedom and independence on the bike, and will experience those same feelings in the future. The contrast between the past and the present found in this poem can be understood by almost any reader and therefore the situation and setting are more easily appreciated. We've all experienced a situation similar to the one described in the poem. Learning to ride a bike for the first time is a big, and often unforgettable experience in a child's life, not to mention the parent's. The anxiety felt by the mother as "[she] kept waiting for the thud of [the child's] crash as [she] sprinted to catch up." The relatability of this account is ultimately the factor that allows readers to comprehend the mother's dread and fear as her daughter leaves to create a life for herself. Not only does the mother's protective instinct relate the account to readers, but the setting creates a familiar backdrop for a somewhat hefty metaphor. Many can call upon memories of those "two round wheels" that "lop[ed] beside us" and our "hair flapping behind [us] like a handkerchief waving goodbye." This setting creates a familiarity that coexists with something that is in the high schooler's imminent future. Pastan uses the familiar setting and situation to use a simple instance to represent an emotional change in life that most will or have experience[d].

"Tu Do Street" Yusef Komunyakaa

In his poetry, Yusef Komunyakaa weaves together the elements of his own life in short lines of vernacular to create complex images of life in his native Louisiana and the jungles of Vietnam. From his humble beginnings as the son of a carpenter, Komunyakaa has traveled far to become a scholar, professor, and prize-winning poet.


Searching for love, a woman,
someone to help ease down the cocked hammer
of my nerves & senses. The music 
divides the evening into black 
& white -- soul, country & western,
acid rock, & Frank Sinatra.
I close my eyes & can see 
men drawing lines in the dust,
daring each other to step across.
America pushes through the membrane
of mist & smoke, & I'm a small boy
again in Bogalusa skirting through talk
coming out of bars with White Only
signs & Hank Snow. But tonight,
here in Saigon, just for the hell of it,
I walk into a place with Hank Williams
calling from the jukebox. The bar girls
fade behind a smokescreen, fluttering
like tropical birds in a cage, not 
speaking with their eyes & usual
painted smiles. I get the silent 
treatment. We have played Judas
for each other out in the boonies
but only enemy machinegun fire 
can bring us together again.
When I order a beer, the mama-san
behind the counter acts as if she
can't understand, while her
eyes skirt each white face,
Down the street black GIs
hold to their turf also.
An off-limits sign pulls me
deeper into alleys, as I look
for a softness behind these voices
wounded by their beauty & war.
Back in the bush at Dak To
& Khe Sanh, we fought
the brothers of these women
we now run to hold in our arms.
There's more than a nation divided
inside us, as black & white
soldiers touch the same lovers
minutes apart, tasting
each other's breath,
without knowing these rooms
run into each other like tunnels
leading to the underworld.



“Tu Do Street” by Yusef Komunyakaa can be understood as autobiographical. Through the development of the poem, the use of imagery and historical allusions allow the reader to find out the speaker’s identity in a racial context.  Komunyakaa wastes no time in revealing who the speaker is. First creating an image of two concrete, contrasting colors: black and white, the reader can see that the poem will comment on race. Alluding to “soul, country & western,/ acid rock, & Frank Sinatra,” genres and singers popular in the late 40’s and early 50’s, Komunyakaa guides readers’ minds to the stereotypical black, American soldier of the time period, “Searching for love, a woman,/ someone to help ease down [his] cocked hammer.” This racial identity is further stereotyped in the “White Only” signs the speaker passes by on his way into a bar. An outcast in this place, “[He] get[s] the silent/ treatment.” The bartender does not even acknowledge his request for a beer “while her/ eyes caress a white face.” We see the speaker continually breaking the stereotype. Unlike the stereotypical black man of the time that we know to be innocent, conflict avoiding, and obedient, the speaker disregards the “White Only” sign and later “An off limits sign pulls [him]/ deeper into alleys.” The speaker is further identified as a pensive and thoughtful individual, gaining a new perspective from his location in Saigon as the reader gets to hear his commentary on the ‘United’ States of America, “There’s more than a nation divided/ inside us, as black and white/ soldiers touch the same lovers/ minutes apart, tasting/ each other’s breath.” We finally get to see some of the thoughts that guide the speaker into that “White Only” bar and down the forbidden alley and it’s these thoughts that complete the speaker’s identity as more than a stereotypical black GI.

"Eden" Emily Grosholz

Emily Grosholz is a poet, literary critic and philosopher. She was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She attended the University of Chicago, where she received her B.A. in 1972, and Yale University, where she received her Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1978. She has traveled widely in Italy and Greece, and lived in Germany, France, and England. Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies and Fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, and Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, she is married to the medievalist and soccer coach Robert R. Edwards. They have four children, Benjamin, Robert, William Jules-Yves, and Mary-Frances (Poetnet.org).

In lurid cartoon colors, the big baby
dinosaur steps backwards under the shadow
of an approaching tyrannosaurus rex.
"His mommy going to fix it," you remark,
serenely anxious, hoping for the best.

After the big explosion, after the lights
go down inside the house and up the street,
we rush outdoors to find a squirrel stopped
in straws of half-gnawed cable. I explain,
trying to fit the facts, "The squirrel is dead."

No, you explain it otherwise to me.
"He's sleeping. And his mommy going to come."
Later, when the squirrel has been removed,
"His mommy fix him," you insist, insisting
on the right to know what you believe.

The world is truly full of fabulous
great and curious small inhabitants,
and you're the freshly minted, unashamed
Adam in this garden. You preside,
appreciate, and judge our proper names.

Like God, I brought you here.
Like God, I seem to be omnipotent,
mostly helpful, sometimes angry as hell.
I fix whatever minor faults arise
with bandaids, batteries, masking tape, and pills.

But I am powerless, as you must know,
to chase the serpent sliding in the grass,
or the tall angel with the flaming sword
who scares you when he rises suddenly
behind the gates of sunset.

The speaker's tone in Emily Grosholz's poem, "Eden" is dynamic, beginning as childish, playful, and simple, and ending as lofty, grandiose, and dignified. This shift is catalyzed by Grosholz’s diction, poetic structure, and metaphor. The beginning of the poem mirrors, in many ways, a nursery rhyme or a children’s story. The narrative poem, accounted by who we assume to be a mother opens with a metaphor using dinosaurs and cartoons -- any kid’s two favorite things. This, in addition to the baby-like dialogue, “His mommy going to fix it," sets a tone that seems to be lighthearted and childish, continuing until a turning point in which the speaker uses an extended metaphor, comparing her son to Adam, herself to God, and their situation to Eden. This simple allusion automatically takes the poem to a graduated level, yet irony is found in the fact that the story of Adam and Eve is often told to little children. Even though the tone is more impressive, the subject matter has changed in a very minor way. The biblical allusion continues the even stanzas of four lines each. At first, this structure complements the playful nature that the nursery rhyme-like account embodies. Later, however, the quatrains add a finality and an authority to the speaker’s tone. They give the impression that there is a real plan behind the words on the page (kind of like how God had an intricate plan to create Adam and Eve). Grosholz’s change in tone is reflected through the diction, poetic structure, and metaphor, with an underlying irony that adds complexity to the seemingly simple narrative.

"Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins

“We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn’t hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered.” 

-Stephen Dunn

Collins served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, and as the New York State Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. His other honors and awards include the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry, as well as fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. 

I ask them to take a poem   

and hold it up to the light   

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem   

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room   

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski   

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope   

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose   

to find out what it really means.

In Billy Collin's "Introduction to Poetry" the speaker urges students, and any reader of poetry for that matter, to enjoy and appreciate poetry as the art that it is. The speaker that we understand to be a teacher asserts that poetry is most appreciated as a sensory experience. The beauty found in poetry is simple: observation in the deepest sense of the word, observation that allows one "to waterski across the surface," viewing it in different lights, and hearing the rhythm and meter with an "ear [pressed] ... against its hive." We often find ourselves "[tying] the poem to a chair with rope and tortur[ing] a confession out of it" but this is what ruins poetry. Instead of appreciating it for art, we tend to break it down into a science, a method, a procedure. Rather than seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting poetry with the words on the page, we dissect each line and stanza, obliterating any meaning for which we begin to search.

To completely disregard the speaker's requests, analysis of the poem's structure follows. The seven stanzas of Collins's poem vary in length between one and three lines. The seemingly random stanza length provides the reader with an ongoing perception of new and different ideas. This, in combination with the vivid imagery helps Collins's ideas to jump off the page, completely throwing away any need to "beat [the poem] with a hose to find out what it really means." The imagery reinforces the speaker's call to appreciate the artistry behind poetry with the senses, and the reader can't help but do so.