I'm so sorry...

Epitaph on a Tyrant
W. H. Auden

http://poetry.rapgenius.com/W-h-auden-epitaph-on-a-tyrant-annotated

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Auden was a 20th century poet. His style was that of a modernist, but he wasn't known for his conforming to labels. His life was interrupted by WW2 and his writings were split before and after the war on either side of the Atlantic. 

This poem centralizes around the idea of how the tyrant interacts with the world around him which is a common subject of modernist poems. The process of tyranny appears to be mechanized. It isn't a series of human choices, but rather an equation that is followed.

In my analysis of this poem I feel that Auden, who survived WW2, is more than likely refer to Adolf Hitler. Hitler a very prevalent tyrant at the time. This is evident from the descriptions of the tyrant's actions. When things were good those clinging to power (senators) laughed along with him, but when Hitler's empire began to crumble the innocent felt the weight of his actions. The discussion of armed forces would also be a likely allusion to Hitler. The poetry of the Tyrant is the artful propaganda that allowed the tyrant presumably Hitler to rise to power on the backs of plebeians enjoying pretty pictures.

Dearest Whitman...

Celia http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/celia-2/



Celia, we know, is sixty-five,
Yet Celia's face is seventeen;
Thus winter in her breast must live,
While summer in her face is seen.

How cruel Celia's fate, who hence
Our heart's devotion cannot try;
Too pretty for our reverence,
Too ancient for our gallantry!

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an Augustan poet and this poem follows the patterns one would expect of an Augustan poem. He was known for his work with classical translations and bore the nickname"The Wicked Wasp of Twickenham" for his literary satires that were noted to be rather "stinging".  He employs paradox in the youth and age of Celia. This is a humorous approach to the subject matter. His description of her age also seems to be an implication of her life's frailty because of her ability to be young and old all at once, implying a short existence. 

Celia is known to be elderly, but she has a young face which would imply a sense of innocence. This is contrasted with the winter in her breast which would signify a hardening of her heart. This hardening would convey an experienced life of pain and struggles, but she doesn't show that she's been hurt because summer is seen in he face. Her fate is cruel because we can't appreciate her struggles; they are unseen to the speaker. In contrast, she has still had all those experiences despite their hidden nature making her inaccessible to the youths that surround her.

The Agony of Christ

In the Catholic church, the Agony of Christ refers to his time in the Garden of Gethsemani, just before Judas came leading the priests and elders of the temple. After telling the disciples to wait behind and not to fall into temptation, Jesus began to pray and had a vision from an angel. He "experienced an agony," presumably in his soul, and sweat began to fall to the ground in the form of drops of blood. (This is considered to be a literal process, as opposed to figurative, in the Catholic church.)

And now, for the agony of Henry Clay High School!
The hallways. Of course. Everyone who has ever set foot in this school would agree that the hallways of this school are the worst part of Henry Clay. Traveling to classes, particularly in that one intersection in the downstairs orange hallway (the Mr. Pope side, not the Mrs. Cabble side), is a claustrophobic experience and should not be repeated at any other point in one's life.
The other things that have bothered me the most throughout high school have been more typical high school things and less specifically Henry Clay things. For instance, I don't like having such petty rules like being required to have a pass to go to the library--it's always seemed to silly to me, because if someone were going to skip school, they would have left school or gone to a different class, not gone to the library. Perhaps this bothers me the most now because I know that next year I will have an immense amount of freedom, but currently I still have to ask if I'm allowed to use the restroom. It feels petty and restricting, and I'm greatly looking forward to having so much more freedom next year.

Sonnet

"What tongue can her perfections tell,
In whose each part all pens may dwell?
Her hair fine threads of finest gold,
In curled knots man’s thought to hold:
But that her forehead says, “In me
A whiter beauty you may see”;
Whiter indeed, more white than snow,
Which on cold winter’s face doth grow.
That doth present those even brows
Whose equal line their angles bows,
Like to the moon when after change
Her horned head abroad doth range;
And arches be to heavenly lids,
Whose wink each bold attempt forbids.
For the black stars those spheres contain,
The matchless pair, even praise doth stain."

Sir Philip Sidney

This sonnet is a Blazon. Another type of a Petrarchian sonnet. A Blazon is a sonnet that catalogs the features or traits of its subject, usually a woman, and describes them using hyperbole, metaphor, or simile. I chose this sonnet because I had never heard of the Blazon sonnet and this was the example from the PowerPoint. In Sir Philip Sidney's blazon he is praising a woman's beauty. By using the Blazon form he was able to catalog her body into different sections and then praise each body part separately.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Harlem Renaissance- The First Half of the 20th Century, after World War 1.

"We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
       We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
       We wear the mask!"

This is a perfect poem displaying the emotions of the African-American race of that time.
It has a repetitive structure and it rhymes and kind of has a swing to it like a jazz or blues song.

This poem is about how African-Americans must mask their real emotions because they must conform to what the World thinks of African Americans. 

What a lovely song

"You belong with me" by Steven Curtis Chapman is a love song that employs metaphor mostly. The extended metaphor of comparing his woman and himself to Tarzan and Jane and plenty of other little metaphors for good measure. Each of these metaphors like the light and dark or the land and sea metaphors emphasize the extreme differences between the two of them, but also each choice depicts two things that are both neccesry and intertwined. The waves crash upon the beach, night turns to day, and the sun shines through the rain clouds. Despite their differences they are both part of a whole. Together they provide the balance so readily prevelant in our natural world. Chapmans's assertion is that he and his lady were ment to be together. They are the real life manifestation of all the people shipping (not human trafficking) that exists between Tarzan and Jane. They are the perfect blending of opposites. This use of metaphor through the allusion to Tarzan and Jane makes the assertion easy to accept. If he is night and she's day and all these other things are true it seems perfectly natural that the two of them are meant to be together.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: Medusa (bad hair day every day)

One of my favorite book series of all time is Perseus Jackson & The Olympians. In the First Book, the main character, Percy Jackson fights Medusa and defeats her by using his phone as a mirror and cuts her head off. Which is exactly similar to the original greek myth, in which, the greek hero Perseus uses his shield as a mirror to decapitate Medusa and when she died a horse sprang from her body. But I started the story at the end, now let me tell the beginning. Medusa and her sisters, the Gorgons, were very beautiful but Medusa was the most beautiful. She caught the eye of the Sea God, Poseidon. Poseidon courted Medusa and they went to Athena's temple to do the "shake & bake." This angered Athena alot and she chased them out of the temple putting a curse on Medusa and turning her into the ugliest woman alive, a monster. Medusa's hair was turned into snakes and if she looked into your eyes you would turn into stone.

Being a part of the African American community HAIR is a very BIG thing. Hair allows a person to be unique. There is so much you can do with hair, and not every hairstyle is for every person. Black people to hair is like white people to pets. We spend so much time, money, and effort with our hair. And you CAIN'T touch it!