In Class Essay

The speaker in this poem has very complex emotions towards desire. The author uses many metaphors to express the speaker's emotions. "Dregs of scattered thoughts" is what he compares to desire. This quote is what first sets the tone of the poem. The speaker sees desire as hopeless, useless scattered thoughts. Desire is unimportant and bad.
The speaker's thoughts of desire is keeping him up at night. Repetition is used to express his thoughts of desire. The thoughts of desire have been with him too long. Snap horses is also used to express the vanity he feels towards desire. He wants to get rid of his thoughts of desire. He desires to kill desire.
The author's use of diction and imagery play a role on how the speaker feels about desire. He uses words such as band, cradle, and web. Band can symbolize the coming together of all of his thoughts of desire. His mind cradles these thoughts without a care in the world. Web how's the complexity of the meaning of the word desire but also the speaker's emotion towards it.
The speaker hates desire so much he wants to get ride of it. He annoy get any thoughts of desire out of his mind. He will always have desire.

Poetry Essay Prompt #3

2004 Poems “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” (Emily Dickinson) and “Acquainted with the Night” (Robert Frost)

Prompt: The poems below are concerned with darkness and night. Read each poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, compare and contrast the poems, analyzing the significance of dark or night in each. In your essay, consider elements such as point of view, imagery, and structure.

Prewrite 

                                                                                  Comparison                                           Contrast 

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark           Feel themselves in the dark                Third person

Acquainted with the Night   Talk about the main character in the dark       First Person

In Class Essay

     In the novel "Great Expectations" by Dickens the main character is greatly influenced by his surroundings/ Pip lives in a time where if you were part of a lower class then you stayed in the lower. By everyone who surrounded him, he was only expected to be a commoner and work the rest of his life. It was a tradition for many people who where born into a high and wealthy class than you were expected to go to school and become great.
     With the cultural influence Pip's great expectation was to become a worker and stay in his lower class to die. This affected him in many ways. Such as at first he could not believe that he himself would be able to become a gentleman. He was also shot down by the girl of he loved because he was not of good enough standards for her.
     The setting of this novel affected the main character Pip because in that time period people were not expected to go anywhere. If the setting had changed to present day then Pip would be an ordinary person with a greater chance to become who he wants to be.  
     With all these surrounding Pip's moral grew stronger. He wanted better for himself. He accomplished becoming a gentlemen and also getting the girl of his dreams.

1999 Essay Question 3

Ophelia from the Shakespeare play Hamlet is a character with a conflict of whether to listen to her heart or her father. Her heart is telling her that her one and only true love is Hamlet. Hamlet is pretending to go crazy and she believes that she can fix him. Her father thinks that she cannot help and that he is not the right man for her.
Between her father and her heart she becomes very conflicted. She does not know what to do. She understands that her father only looks out for her best interest like any other father would. Her heart is telling her to choose Hamlet because it will ultimately make her happy.
With these two opposing forces it was very hard for her to make a decision. It was either to follow her heart and choose Hamlet the one she loved romantically of her father whom she loved and respected dearly. With these two opposing forces she became crazy. When she became mad she floated down a river and drowned.    

1999 Essay Question 2

      McCarthy used a lot of imagery to convey the experiences of the main character. "The eye turned to fire gave back no light he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand on her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes so that he can see her running through the mountains." In this sentence you can see that the main character is mourning a loss of someone. Even though they are covered in blood he can still see her in a living state. The fact that her eye gave back no fire gives a sense that the main character and the coyote had a connection.

     The author's diction with the help of imagery helps with the setting of this passage. By using the words talus and escarpments you know that he is in the wild. Talus is a slopping mass of rock debris at the base of a cliff. Escarpments are steep slopes. By using these words he is able to set the setting and the tone of the passage. The main character is in the wilderness and in a peaceful place where he encounters death.

     By encountering death the readers are able to sense the tone of the main characters experiences. The death of the coyote affected the main character in ways that you suspect that he had a connection with her. The tone is very calm and mourning.

Poetry Essay Prompt #2

2004B Poem “Crossing the Swamp” (Mary Oliver)

Prompt: Read the following poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the techniques the poet uses to develop the relationship between the speaker and the swamp.

                   Speaker                                                                                    Swamp 

  "here is swamp, here is struggle" -Anaphora 

 "Here is the endless wet thick                             

 cosmos, center of everything"-imagery

Poetry Essay Prompts #1

1997 Poem: “The Death of a Toad” (Richard Wilbur)

Prompt: Read the following poem carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain how formal elements such as structure, syntax, diction, and imagery reveal the speaker’s response to the death of a toad.

Prewrite: Response to Death of a Toad: 

Syntax and Diction: By using the words sanctuaried and using the phrase as still as stone you know that the toad will die. 

Structure: The poem is laid out in the steps of the death of a toad

Imagery: Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got,In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies As still as if he would return to stone,And soundlessly attending, dies