Narrative Poem Research

Find a narrative poem and write in your blog about its characteristics. Examine and comment about its length, rhyme scheme, meter and style and whether or not you think it makes good use of imagery and figures of speech.

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
After reading this poem by Robert Frost, I kind of understood what he was talking about. In the begining, I found some rhymes with the words like "When" and "bend". The "e" sounds. While I was reading it, it was quite rytmetic and fluent. It is like constant stream of pleasent sounds like water going down the stream. It is quite discriptive and it talks about the ice storm very clearer. After, it talks about a sunny winter morning and then rain. This is quite a long narrative poem and it uses descriptive imagery quite clearly. I can picture the glistening fragments as pieces of something shiny. It then talks about birch and the description makes me understand more about the tree and about the wood. That is about it I can get from this poem. It was a nice a fluent long poem.

Extended Metaphor

In class we described what life could be as a metaphor. For example, Life is like Skyrim, or Life is like Angry Birds. However, I am not comparing it to video games, but to wind. Life is like Wind. It is like wind because wind can blow slowly and peacefully or violently. When it blows violently your life is on fire and moving fast-paced. While peacefully, is the happy moments in life where everything is peaceful and quiet. Life is also unpredicted just like the wind. Though there are several instruments in the modern world to predict it, it is always not perfect. Just like fortune telling to predicts our lives. It may happen, or it might not. Life and wind both have ways of predicting it and both can be random at times. It can change drastically ruining your umbrella and day, or your life.

Seven Acts

The seven acts of life in a person's life in my opinion would be quite similar with William's Shakespeare's. At first you are born from your mother and an infant. You live as a baby and then soon you are going to elementary school as a young child. After elementry school, you will become more responsible for you life and start thinking about the future. After that step, you will graduate and go to University to continue your education. After graduating with your parents seeing you and showing their pride, you will soon get a job. Then you will make a choice of your life and get married and have children. You will then retire from your job as an older person and your children may have had kids by now. You die peacefully and knowing you have had a great life. I really liked this poem.

Disrespect

There are many situations in my life where I feel disrespected by others. I feel that I can do it but the people do not. The most common situation is that my parents do not respect my right to make choices. My parents make all my choices even when  there are times I do not want a decesion from them. Sometimes I try to persuade them but it usually ends up as a long talk or quarrel over the matter. I feel that my parents to do not appreciate my age to make my own decisions for myself. It is maybe because I am untrustworthy or maybe because I am too young. However, I think I am at the age to make these decisions for my own. I usually feel quite sad inside and angry becauset they don't see that I have the potential to do all things by myself. However, it is slightly different now. I am starting to make my own decisions.

A Blessing

When I closed my eyes, I visualized something nice in nature. I saw some very beautiful things. They sky was bright and coloured lightly in blue. There was music playing like something from bambi. There we flowers bright with colours and sunflowers facing their faces to the bright yellow smiling sun. There was plenty of wildlife. No carnivorus creatures in my mind. Kind of like the movie Bambi, kind of weird. Maybe Disney influences me way too much. Anyways there were many cute and small animals. Fluffy, to furry, and rough on the skin. Like rabbits, deer, friendly bears, squriels, chipmunks, birds, all those sort of wildlife in a forest and in a nice wildlife place. It makes me feel peaceful and makes my heart feel calm. It make me want to dance and hum music while skipping through the flowers and petting the animals. What a vivid happy imagination I have.

The Road Not Taken Quickwrite

I had a turning point in my life before. It was trying out for a sports team. A long time ago, I was not really confident in taking up sports. I was not a really fit child for playing sports like soccer or basketball. However, when I was young, there was this sports team for soccer. I thought to myself, I mind as well try it but I knew I would not make it. I joined, played around and kicked the ball. I actually passed and got on to the team, I was considered their best golee. I was quite amazed with myself and it gave me the confidence to start trying out other teams. Because of that choice I made a long time ago, I now join sports teams. In elementary school, I joined volley-ball and badminton. And at my current school in Taiwan, I joined badminton again to improve my skills at it. If I never had made that choice, I could be my old unconfident self with sports and not have any after school sport activites. I might be even more unfit and lazy without the encouragment and effort to put into exercise.

The Lady, or the Tiger "Make the Connection"

Have I ever made a choice between something that was good for me and something that was good for someone I cared about? Nope, I actually have never done something like this. However, I have done something like choosing between something that was good for me or something that was hurt me in the long run. I had to choose between to drink a can a coke. It might taste good and quench my thirst but in the long run rot my teeth and gain calories. I could not choose it to make a healthier choice but not get the drink. Kind of weird how I talked about this. It is just that I have never done something of the caliber choosing between doing something good for someone I cared about, but I have done it for myself. Ah well, not much more to talk about in this quickwrite.
"edit"
After thinking about it more I helped a friend a long time ago about a video game. He was my best friend but he had a terrible addiction to it. It was making him kind of depressing and unsociable so in order to save him, I changed his account password so he could not play. After a month, I told the truth and he thanked me. He got over that game and wanted to do other things or at least another game. That game was called World of Warcraft. I myself never was interested in it but there are many people who do actually have the major addiction problem with just about any game. More common in online games.