Final English Study - Poems

Dreams - Langston Hughes

Metaphor - Keep pursuing your dreams, without them life will be meaningless.

Dreams deferred - Langston Hughes

Simile - The dangers of putting off your dreams

Where the sidewalk ends - Shel Silverstein

Rhyme, metaphors, Symbolism - presents the differences between childhood and adulthood in a way that makes readers reflect on growing up

On turning ten - Billy Collins

Metaphors, Symbolism - the pain, discomfort, and loss of innocence that comes with growing up.

Hanging fire - Audre Lorde

Imagery, repetition - the frustrating feelings that can arise from the contradictions of being a teenager. (Also with an absent parent?)

Same song - Pat Mora

Imagery, repetition - societal pressure to achieve superficial beauty, affecting both adolescents and adults

Hulk Smash - Greg Santos

Everyone wants to fit in

maggie & millie & molly & may - e. e. cummings

imagery, personification - identity and how it evolves depending on experience.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

personification, hyperbole, and alliteration - the power of nature to inspire and uplift humanity through its beauty

A bedtime story

imagery - dramatizes the different expectations for fairy tale lessons and endings

The road not taken

Imagery - making choices. You will make many choices in your life, and those choices can come with many different thoughts about what could have happened if you had chosen differently.