Limericks

Garrett Kitchen

April 29th, 2013

There once was a boy from McKoo

Who accidentally bought some shoes

He wore them a lot

But one day he forgot

When he took them off and drank too much booze.

There once was a man from LeBass

His humor was truly quite crass

He told many jokes

At the expense of most folks

One day they made him eat grass.

There once was a kid from the sky

Who knew how to fly quite high

He caught many birds

Who took many turds

But that’s not true it’s a lie.

Poetry Response #3

Garrett Kitchen

April 24th, 2013

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is a poem about how The Author came upon a time in his life when he had to choose which path, or what he would do and be like, in life, and he chose the on less taken. The poem is one giant metaphor for subconsciously making the decision of what to do in life. This poem doesn’t have too many elements of poetry that actually relate to letters and syllables, but it has very good imagery and lyricism. This poem has the rhyme scheme ABAAB, and Frost strictly follows the scheme throughout the entire poem. I think the Frost put a strict rhyme scheme in such a serious poem, because he wanted to show that serious things can be playful, but also to make the poem flow better, and to lighten the mood a bit. This poem also has some assonance using double “l”s, “ I shall be telling this with a sigh”. Additionally this poem has some repetition in a few places, the first line repeats as the eighteenth line, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,”. The difference is after the first line Frost talks of how he has to make a decision and he is sorry he cannot travel both, but after the eighteenth line it talks about how he took the path less traveled by. Because the Author made the title of this poem: The Road Not Taken, I think it is about not just choosing which path to take, which the bulk of the poem seems to be about, but also about wondering what taking the other path would’ve been like, because if you take one path then there is another path left not taken. Frost uses certain words that help the poem flow, but also make it seem more meaningful, as if he wants to show the poem is worth using seldom used words to make the poem sound important. For example, “In leaves no step had trodden black.” also “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” Frost could’ve said Two roads split in a yellow wood, but he said diverged, and that flows better, and sounds more intelligent and special.

Seasinal, Nature, and Technology Haikus

Garrett Kitchen

April 23rd, 2013

The warm summer sun

Starch white clouds and blue skies

Nature is freedom

A small black spider

Catches an obnoxious fly

He is not that bad

My cellphone vibrates

Or is it the Mighty Earth,

I answer my text

Abstract Noun Poem

Garrett Kitchen

April 18th, 2013

I have seen the tendrils of fear slowly constrict man

Consuming him until he is a babbling idiot,

The whole human race amidst my world

One flick away from utter and complete anarchy,

The brutal cleanse of my wrath,

The truth of my ironic immortality.

I send my plagues on currents of wind,

To help me on my life’s purpose,

To purge the world of hateful people, of evil in human form,

But I can never be a hero

The truth of humanity is my beauty.

I’d rather be like the rain, cleansing the world peacefully,

Wanted in most places, as simple as supple survival and nourishment

Like ambrosia for the Gods,

I’d rather be like emptiness, hurting no one, but

Always present everywhere, existing with everything,

I’d rather be harmless than a power that grips all.

I know not what every meaningless opinion of mortality’s slaves

But I do know the pettiness of combating me with frivolous opinions

Thinking “I will be different, I will not conform to unwritten laws

That bind and contort beauty to a muttering old creature

And make all things peaceful in the end.”

I say I come to perform an evil dance

With devils or angels it does not matter

For hiding from perpetual truth, and unavoidable occurrence

Is not a challenge but an impossible task

Don’t they know I only wish to experience my unbeing and eerie existence in peace.

Poetry Response

Garrett Kitchen

April 17th, 2013

in a middle of a room by E. E. Cummings

in a middle of a room by E. E. Cummings is a sorrowful poem about a man’s last moments before suicide. At first I had trouble understanding with all of Cummings’s odd uses of punctuation and in some place the lack or replacement of a word. For example, “The is blond with small hands” Cummings didn’t use the word man even though that is what I interpreted what he meant. he possibly didn’t use the word man, because he wanted to convey that he man is about to take his life and cease to exist, so he is no longer a man. Cummings also replaces the word “the” with the word “a” in the first line of the first stanza, “in a middle of a room” And in the last line of the first stanza he replaces “himself” with “a” again. “smiling to a self.” “stands a suicide” instead of saying stands a man about to commit suicide or stands a man, Cummings chose to call the man a suicide. This could possibly stick with the theme that the man is about to become nothing, and even now minutes before he takes his own life he is not a man but a suicide. in the third line of the poem it says: “sniffing a Paper rose” I think Cumming capitalized paper because he wants to emphasize that the rose is not real, but made of paper. In the second and third stanzas of the poem, which comes closely after the paper rose line, the man speaks about the how and why the rose is paper.

"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes

people are in real:imagine

somewhere real flowers,but

I can't imagine real flowers for if I

could,they would somehow

not Be real"

(so he smiles

smiling)"but I will not

everywhere be real to

you in a moment"

The man not only speaks about: how the flower isn’t real, but somewhere it is spring, so imagine real flowers. Following the imagine real flowers line the man talks about how he can’t imagine real flowers because if he did they wouldn’t be real. This line shows how sad and depressed he is, because even if he imagined real flowers, they would somehow not be real, and that is because he imagined them. Additionally, he says “but i will not...” and the stanza ends. I think Cummings put this at the end of a paragraph because he wanted it to be a part of the “for if I could,they would somehow not Be real” part, so it goes they would somehow not be real, but I will not. The reason the quote doesn’t end when the stanza ends is because it is a part of another one. “but I will not everywhere be real to you in a moment” What the man is saying is that the flower imagining doesn’t matter because he is about to become not real, like the flowers, in a moment. At the end of the poem Cumming puts this:

“(a moon swims out of a cloud

a clock strikes midnight

a finger pulls a trigger

a bird flies into a mirror)”

Once again the author uses “a” instead of “the”. More importantly it is like the poem ends, and the parentheses signify that this is an action not narration or the man speaking. The man stops talking, and then this happens and so I think as soon as he finishes talking he kills himself. I think this because of the “a finger pulls a trigger” part of the final stanza. The ending of this poem is very eerie, because in the same second the man kills himself it turns to midnight, a moon shows by coming out of the clouds, and a bird flies into a mirror.

Noun Poem

Garrett Kitchen

April 18^th, 2013

Abstr(a c t)

Happiness is vibrant purple bumpin’ bass

Success is explosive gold paint on a blank canvas

Dreams are confusing green enchanted forests in an alternate universe

Loneliness is empty white space

Envy is dense black storm clouds

Sorrow is dull gray skies forming storms

Fear is painful black serpents twisting knots in your stomach

Death is brutal red Armies slaughtering each other

Poem Response: "i sing of Olaf glad and big" by E. E. Cummings

Garrett Kitchen

April 11th, 2013

Poem Response: i sing of Olaf glad and big by E. E. Cummings

        “i sing of Olaf glad and big” by E. E. Cummings is a poem about a kind man named Olaf who was disgusted by war, and spoke out against while in the army and was beat for it, but kept talking badly about it and was tossed in a jail where he died. I think the military men beat him so brutally for speaking his mind because they were afraid that his beliefs were accurate. It seems as if Cummings was fond of Olaf for he had sympathy for Olaf in the way he wrote the poem. Also E. E. Cummings didn’t capitalize any letters in the poem including I, but he capitalizes the “O” in Olaf and that could partially be because it’s a name but I also think it is to honor Olaf. Also the when Olaf was speaking in the poem the “I”s were capitalized, but when it went too E. E. Cummings’s narration the “I”s were lowercase. I observed that in many of Cummings’s poems he plays around with capitalization, word and letter placement on the page, and different uses of grammar and punctuation, but in this poem he doesn’t tamper with much at all except to emphasize Olaf. I think Cummings did this out of respect for Olaf. He didn’t play around with grammar or punctuation much, but in the third line of the poem he puts a hyphen in the word objector. “a conscientious object-or” I think this means that Olaf is a conscientious objector of the military and its views or he is just a conscientious object, that means to the government and system he is not a person but an object among many other expendable objects. This poem tells the story of Olaf, but also is bias in his favor and because of this promotes nonconformity to an extent. This poem gets very gruesome at times which I think the author used to his advantage so that he could convey how brutal Olaf was treated. “unless statistics lie he was

more brave than me:more blond than you.” this was the conclusion to the poem, which was eye opening in the sense that speaking one’s mind against a powerful force can end up in bad things happening to someone. After reading this poem a few times and digesting it, I realized that this poem must be a true story of the poor Olaf, or it could be a fictional story made up to show the power of the government, and speaking one’s mind. But as long as the reader interprets it the way they want, and takes something important away from the poem, what does it matter.

Vs. Poem

Chaos	Vs.	Order
Drunk	Vs.	Sober
Gangsters	Vs.	Lawyers
Gangs	Vs.	Law Firms
Crime	Vs.	Law
Anarchy	Vs.	Control
Ignorance	Vs.	Knowledge
Nuclear War	Vs.	World Peace
Nuclear Fallout	Vs.	Pollution Free World
Scratched	Vs.	Smooth
Dirty	Vs.	Clean
Stressed	Vs.	Calm
Broken	Vs.	Working

List Poem

Garrett

Kitchen

Things That Never Die

The Vastness Of The Universe

The Power Of Energy

The Products Of Culture

The Knowledge Of Information

The Sting Of The Truth

The Emotion Of Stories

The Rawness Of Words

The Malevolence  Of Thoughts

The Pureness Of The Soul

The Nostalgia Of Memories

The Many Faces Of God

The Rush Of Life

The Emptiness Of Eternity

The Peacefulness Of Death