White Snow

Bright sunshine breaks through

Glistening white snow melting

Winter turns to Spring

Explication:

For my final poem I decided that I would bless my blog with a haiku that is actually worth reading. And here it is. This particular poem caught my interest because of the imagery it creates when depicting the changing of seasons. For a poem of only 17 syllables this piece uses good descriptions and examples. I didn't find any poetic devices in this poem except for the possible personification in line one to do with the sunshine "breaking through".

Seeing as this is my final blog post I will bid you, my readers, adieu as I look forward to further pursuing the life of a professional poet. I plan to blog for a living when I move to the beautiful South American town of Cardoba, Argentina. Hopefully, I will be paid in pineapples so that, one day, I may complete my life goal of constructing a pineapple-raft in my basement and, with it, sailing the Seven Seas. I may not make as much money as a successful academic, but being a pineapple pirate must have some perks.

Recuerde este día como "el día en que casi capturado el capitán Alistair Russell"!

thank you, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Concrete Poem

This is my concrete poem that I made in the shape of a rainbow so as to include all of the colours of light in one poem. There aren't any poetic devices, just a collection of descriptive words associated with a rainbow. I found that this poem actually took a lot longer than I thought it would, partly because of my terrible scanner.

Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
  Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
  Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?


I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
  Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
  And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?


And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
  Majestic — as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! —
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
  Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
  And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.


By Gerard Manley Hopkins


Explication:


This is a Petrarchan Sonnet written by Gerard Hopkins and it relates to my theme of colour because colour is the primary motif throughout the poem. This is evident in the lines "And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder" and "very-violet-sweet". I especially liked how the author used 'azurous' as an adjective because I feel it gives the poem a deeper meaning than if the author had just used 'blue'. I found many alliterations in this poem: line 1 - barbarious in beauty, line 2 - what wind walks, line 3 - silk-sack, line 3 - wilder wilful-wavier, line 9 - world-wielding, line 10 - stallion stalwart, line 13 - bold and bolder. As well as many other poetic devices, there were many cases of repetition (lines 5 and 11). I enjoyed this poem because of how intricate every part is. It is clear this took a lot of work from a very skilled poet.

ORANGE

Original and vibrant
Renowned mix of red and yellow
Attention grabbing
Natural and healing
Greatly warming
End of the year

Explication:

This poem is an acrostic and I chose to use orange as my topic because it is a colour that I haven't used in other poems yet. The colour orange also hasn't been mentioned in any of the poems I've found by other authors. I like orange because it is a warm colour but also commands attention with its brightness. I tried to use a multitude of descriptive adjectives in this poem because it was too short for me to effectively incorporate poetic devices into it. This poem is short in length but each description goes a long way.

There once was a man from Peru

There once was a man from Peru
Who was feeling awfully blue
He so easily said
He'd switch back to red
Or even a yellow mood too


Explication:

This is a limerick that I wrote about a man who is feeling bad and, through colour, seeks a way to make himself feel better. The humour is aimed toward taking a more literal meaning from the phrase "feeling blue" and using it to my advantage as it relates to my theme. I enjoyed making this limerick because the only big challenge was to make the rhythm fit to the appropriate template.

Mountain Villanelle

Once-blue mountains, almost gone
The old and faded ones still standing,
Tired from life’s marathon,

Waiting for the coming dawn

Like ghosts forever calling,

Once-blue mountains, almost gone,

But just enough when new light shone,

To paint a scene of landscape vast,

Tired from life’s marathon

New-built stacks of glass come on,

And covers up the nature’s past,

Once-blue mountains, almost gone,

And watching as the new sun shone,

All but few had eyes well cast,

Tired from life’s marathon,

The mountains had soon brought on

A conflict, not first nor last,

Once-blue mountains, almost gone,
Tired from life’s marathon.


 Explication:

I decided to make this poem a villanelle because it seemed a bit more of a challenge. It was difficult to relate every line back to the two refrains but I thought it worked out in the end. My to refrains were "Once-blue mountains, almost gone." and "Tired from life's marathon". This poem talked of how the beauty of nature goes more and more unnoticed as the world develops. I also tried to mention how city skylines are slowly replacing the beautiful mountain landscapes. I included a few poetic devices in this poem such as the simile in line 5.

Sky Haiku

  Up in open sky

colours spread all around us

here, a rainbow shines

Explication:

I chose to do this poem in the form of a haiku because it was a short style of poem that greatly appealed to me. This haiku is done in the traditional way of incorporating 17 syllables in lines of 5, 7, and 5 respectively. Other than the possible presence of assonance in both lines 1 and 2, I did not use any poetic devices to make this poem. I chose to make this poem a bit different by relating colour to an element of the sky as opposed to material objects like I did in a few of my other poems. I tried to use as much imagery as I could and I chose to incorporate the impression of a rainbow as it contains every colour within it and it relates well to my theme.

An Ode To Gray From A Color-Eater

Gray embodies color blindness

it is the essence of...

A winters day

a rainy day

an impending gloom

a moment of hope lost

that turns even the brightest skies

toward its way.

It is A-Flat and cold

rapes high noon

and breaks her back

dragging her toward evening

blocks out even the brightest rays

and steals the meaning

the light intended to portray

across the face of the waking world.

As gray as the devils cloven hoof

stomping on God's glory

subtle, eerie, looming

the villain in every fairy story

One can't be sure

and yet assumes

that the Big Bad Wolf Himself

was Gray.

Gray is...

a rainy day daydream

it calls the winds to move its prey

it blends and mixes green and blue

removing yellow from the hue

makes it do things it shouldn't do

and blends it all with the heavy

constancy of black.

it is forbidden, it is taboo

it is all the trouble

you love getting yourself into

so that you and only you

can define the way back out again.

It is control

it is the way you held me down

it is the "shhh, don't make a fucking sound."

it is hiding from

slipping under dust ruffles

never intended to serve those purposes

it is a stone carved ancient lie

it is all of those hello's

you know will only ever end in good-bye.

It treads upon the soul

taking everything along with it

as it goes

gray is the pied pipers revenge

the cloak of winters trailing gowns

the fleecing of bright skies

the time God takes to cry

for all the things we have done

you believe He agreed with

you believe He shared your intent.

Trust me... He didn't.

Gray is a necessity

a cleansing

a purging of the light

that meets everything

in all of its in betweens

these two degrees of black and white

takes and renders each

and tempers both extremes.

By jonzac_almighty (postpoems.com)

 Explication:

This particular interested me because the author was also posting on a blog for poems. In all honesty this poem is really weird and it seems as though the author just threw his/her thoughts onto the page. Therefore I shall dub this style the name: "Mind-vomit poetry" (assuming it hasn't been named already). Soon to be taught in grade 11 English classes across North America, Mind-vomit poetry is an effective way of displaying every single one of an individual's thoughts and emotions in an incredibly confusing way that gets other readers' minds racing. Mostly because they are frantically trying to interpret what-in-God's-name you were trying to say in order to secure an A in English class...

This poem provided me with a view into the author's mind on the topic of the colour gray. From what I read it seemed as though the author had a fairly negative opinion on this particular colour. This is evident even in the first stanza in lines such as "an impending doom" and "a moment of hope lost", to name a few.

The poetic devices I found are as follows:

Allusions

-line 17 "the devils cloven hoof"

-line 23 "the Big Bad Wolf himself"

Assonance

-line 26 "rainy day daydream"

Repetition

-line 36 "you and only you"

-line 55 & 56 "you believe He..."

Metaphors

-line 9 "It is A-Flat and cold"

-line 25 & 26 "Gray is... a rainy day daydream

-stanzas 6,7,8 and 9.

Similes

-line 17 "As gray as the devils cloven hoof"

Personification

-stanza 2 & 5

I found that stanza 5 was the closest in relation to my theme of colour because of how the imagery contained in that stanza was created by the actions of the colour gray in relation to many other colours. This stanza's primary role is to liken gray to darker colours and emphasize the author's opinion that the colour gray is something that is bad. Overall I thought this poem was very good but difficult to fully analyze.

GLOW

Glow

Wonderfully bright,

Eternal in thought

Within everything we seek,

Passionately

Explication:


This is a cinquain poem in its most basic form:

1st line - one word (title)
2nd line - two words
3rd line - three words
4th line - four words
5th line - one word


I chose to construct this poem in this style because I admire the impact that a short poem can make upon a reader.  I decided to use "Glow" as my title and theme because it refers to the burning brightness of colour and has a greater connection to more vivid colours as opposed to other darker, more mellow ones. I tried to include as many descriptive words and imagery as I could, but in a poem consisting of only eleven words it was challenging. This cinquain was constructed to appeal to the connection between sight and thought.

Under the Harvest Moon

     UNDER the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

     Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

By Carl Sandburg

Explication

In this well-known pastoral poem, Carl Sandburg does an incredible job of outlining changes from one thing to another. For example, he brilliantly describes the change from summer to fall, from life to death, and even from night to day. These opposing ideals are included as contrasts between the first and second stanzas. I chose this poem for my theme of colour because of the little descriptive words the author employs in order to emphasize the contrasts. The lines that I felt were the most important were "When the soft silver drips shimmering" and "When the flagrant crimson lurks in the dusk". These lines are vital to the poem because, unlike lines 5 and 12, they describe a colour as the subject of the sentence rather than using it as an adjective. This lines are more effective because they are used purely for imagery as it is challenging for the reader to comprehend exactly how a colour can "drip" or "lurk". As for poetic devices, there is a hyperbole in line 15 (a thousand memories), as well as a paradox in the last line (unanswerable questions).

Creation's Colours

Indigo is the color of creation

heavens, the formless void

indigo is for the heavens, a color of creation

Blue is the color of creation

water, life giving water

blue is for water, a color of creation

Yellow is the color of creation

sun, life warming light

yellow is for sunlight, a color of creation

Brown is the color of creation

earth, the good rich earth

brown is for the earth, a color of creation

Green is the color of creation

plants, the circle of life

green is for plants, a color of creation

Orange is the color of creation

fire, rail against the dark

orange is for fire, a color of creation

Red is the color of creation

fruits, the bounty of the earth

red is for fruit, a color of creation

Violet is the color of creation

royal hue, the color of the King

violet is for our God, a color of creation

All are the colors of creation

the bow, the dome, the covenant

the rainbow is the color of creation

By Raymond A. Foss

Explication

I enjoyed reading this poem because of how well the author incorporated a large multitude of colours into this piece of poetry. I like how the author gave a brief, but meaningful description for each of the colours he decided to talk about. These descriptions make the poem much more significant for the reader and helped to create a strong image in one's mind as each individual colour was represented as an object or idea in our world. It was interesting to see how the author ordered the colours so as to go back and forth between warm and cool colours. Repetition is the most influential poetic device in this poem as it is used throughout the poem specifically with the first and last lines of every stanza. Lastly I liked how in each stanza the first two lines would be summarized in the last. This added some structure to poem and made it logical and easy to read and appreciate.