POETRY ANALYSIS

*groans* I'd like to say that making caps-locked titles on our posts is obnoxious but how can I complain when I have nothing better to suggest.  It's what I would choose if I had to verify the existence of all our posts.

I'm gonna go ahead and use poems off the handy-dandy link on the class blog. Geronimoooo! *Javert's spine breaking sound*

Dulce et Decorum Est: on a scale of 1-5, this gets 4 snaps.
Paraphrase: We were marching home to rest after we had just finished a battle and suddenly we were gassed.  One of us didn't get his mask on in time.  I had to watch him drown in his blood.  There is no glory in war.
Purpose: Share about how war is not like the propaganda made it seem.
Structure: Octet-Sextet-Couplet-12 line stanza
Shift: The shift occurs when the speaker announces the gas.  We go from a trip to safety to the thick of danger.
Speaker:  The speaker is a normal soldier.
Spelling: The diction of this poem makes the dying and dead a bit impersonal.  A leader would have said "my men."
Tone:  Quite grave.
Theme:  Going to war will not make you a better man (unless you were a vile human being before deployment, I suppose)

Ozymandias( by Horace Smith, not Percy Shelley): 5 snaps for making me think about the future.
Paraphrase: There is a stone leg in Egypt that once belonged to a statue and that statue was made by a powerful civilization but they are gone now and the same may happen to London.
Purpose: To display our etheriality.
Structure: Octet-sextet
Shift: The shift occurs when the speaker mentions that we can think about how the same may happen to us that happened to Babylon.
Speaker: Sounds like a thoughtful explorer
Spelling:  Why did he choose Ozymandias?  It's another name for Ramses II who built a wealthy Egypt.  Less than 150 years after his death, the empire fell.
Tone: Wondrous
Theme: Humbleness.  You aren't the first and you won't be the last.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night: 4 snaps for making me want to write a bucket list.
Paraphrase: Don't die without a fight.  Wise men know their end.  At the end, all will be clear so don't waste your life.
Purpose: To remind people that yolo
Structure: tercet-tercet-tercet-tercet-tercet-quatrain
Shift: Sounds like a reminder to live it up until you see that he is writing to his father, probably on his deathbed :(
Speaker: A man telling his father to fight death because men are supposed to live fiercely.
Spelling: Rage is frequent so I imagine he meant to portray his anger.   Really good flow in this one.
Tone: Angsty
Theme: Carpe diem.

Danse Russe: 3 snaps for teh lulz it gave me
Paraphrase: Everybody is asleep and the sun is glowing through the house.  I am naked, dancing, and singing.  I am lonely but this makes me happy.
Purpose: Expository of how good some people are at frontin'.
Structure: free verse, I guess.
Shift: When he first mentions he is lonely, you go from that "work it, girl!" attitude to " :*( "
Speaker:  A man who feels restricted by what he has created for himself.  Looking for his real self.
Spelling: Dat imagery. Grotesquely reminds me of self-loathing.  Who shall say... is the "say it to my face moment."
Tone: Melancholy
Theme: Despite what we may be experiencing in life, there are moments in which we have all the control and nothing can restrain your mind (or body) at those times.

The Second Coming: 2 snaps for not being very intriguing to me
Paraphrase: Bad things are happening that remind us of the Bible's description of the Apocalypse.
Purpose: How do you just pull a purpose out of this one? To share what the world of the author is like, I suppose.
Structure: Octet-14 line stanza
Shift: When the speaker figures out what all the signs he's mentioned correlate to.
Speaker: A man afraid of what the world has become.
Spelling: Troubles, pitiless, darkness, nightmare, and rough.  There are plenty words to make you think of an apocalyptic landscape but these do the best.  Heavy christian undertone.
Tone: Christian.  Jk, I meant tragic and survivalist.
Theme: This world is going to hell thanks to ironic imbalance.