"We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks

"We Real Cool" definitely has a powerful message behind it. It is a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. It was written in the 1960's when African-Americans were fighting for their civil rights. She looks at the time of adolescence African-American from her generation would fight for their rights as human beings letting be seen as rebels by dropping school, singing, dancing, living life like it was the end of the world.The teenagers are obviously not too fond about attending school. Therefore, they skip and find solace and pleasure at a pool facility. It seems as if the teenagers really don't care about their education and go day by day living a happy-go-lucky lifestyle. The happiness that they are feeling by playing pool supports that theory.

They had to work hard, make their voices be heard. We also have to look at the time she was living when black community was not accepted into society. Martin Luther King Jr. was the civil rights leader back then. Black community was segregated. She gives the poem a special effect with the use of syntactic urgency, pressure to connect the lines.The entire tone of the poem is very upbeat; however, the tone changes dramatically at the end with the following statement: "We die soon." This one line alone says a lot.

"Homage to My Hips" by Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton, who died on February 13, relied on her subtle, extraordinary imagination to turn everyday words and commonplace constructions into unforgettable images and powerful poems. Sonnets, villanelles, and the other fanciful embroideries of rhythm and rhyme she left to others, preferring to fill out her lines with reality, with sadness, and most memorably with humor and warmth.

"Homage to my Hips" is one of the many poems that Clifton composed. In this poem she makes a reference to her body giving stress to just a part of it, which are her hips and she enforces that with the lowercase “i “when she says, "i have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top!" (Line 13-15) She concentrates on her hips and gives them supreme control of everything. She lets the reader know that her hips make her feel free, be queen of her body. She sees herself as a free self-determining woman, but at the same time her "big"(line 1) "mighty" (line 11 ) "magic"(line 12 ) hips make her look a very sensual and seducing woman with men. It is very obvious the presence of feminist point of views in this writing when she mentions that "they don't like to be held back. These hips have never been enslaved, they go wherever they want to go, they do what they want to do. “(Line 7-10)

"Digging" by Seamus Heaney

"Digging" is the first poem of Seamus Heaney's first collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966). He wrote it in his mid-twenties and is based on the country world he lived in at that time when especially his father and grandfather would live to work the land to support their families.

Seamus starts by comparing his pen with a gun when he says that the squat pen rests; snug as a gun (2) considering it powerful even though it is resting. He describes his pen as short and thick, and it feels perfectly comfortable between his finger and thumb.

He contemplates his father through the window and remembers how dedicated he and his grandfather had always been (3-9). Back then, they would work the land day and night as real tough men, without resting. In Heaney’s poem, he shows great admiration towards his father and grandfather, but at the same time there is also a mix of feelings. At a point he gets angry because he does not see himself digging the land like his father and grandfather did (28). In some way he wishes he could be like them, to follow that tradition, but he knows that his vocation is making use of his quality as a writer. That is the best way he can make a tribute, recognition to his elders and excel as a writer. The end is very similar to the beginning, with the only difference that he finally decides to dig his way with his short thick pen.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it (29-31).

"Love is a Rose" by Neil Young

"Love is a Rose"

Love is a rose but you better not pick it

It only grows when it's on the vine.

A handful of thorns and you'll know you've missed it.

You lose your love when you say the word "mine".

I wanna see what's never been seen,

I wanna live that age old dream.

Come on, lads, we can go together

Let's take the best right now,

Take the best right now.

I wanna go to an old hoe-down

Long ago in a western town.

Pick me up cause my feet are draggin'

Give me a lift and I'll hay your wagon.

Love is a rose but you better not pick it

It only grows when it's on the vine.

A handful of thorns and you'll know you've missed it

You lose your love when you say the word "mine".

Mine, mine.

Love is a rose, love is a rose.

Love is a rose, love is a rose.

Love is a Rose, by Neil Young

"Love is a Rose"

Roses have had meaning since the dawn of time. Everyone knows that a red rose is a symbol for love. In “Love is a Rose” is a romantic song about love. Neil Young wrote this song about a possessive love. Neil said positive and negative things about love. He wrote about how love can hurt like roses thorns. He uses a metaphor saying that love is a rose. The rose is a symbol of passion, love, and romance. Since roses are considered pure flowers like love is, you should never try to keep it yourself like a secret hidden treasure of the word.

Instead in this song, Neil Young advises you to love it, in the complex meaning of the word; commit yourself to that love and let it breath; let it free as it was in a beginning when it was found because love dies slowly when imprisoned. Finally, Neil said “A handful of thorns and you will know you have missed it,”which means that once love is able to fly away, it would never come back. The final message of the song, Love is a Rose, is that you may want to choose the perfect person for your life, so you do not hurt your feelings.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

In this short story, Edgar Allan Poe exposes the five stages of coping with death, which are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, in that specific order. At the beginning of the tale we see presence of denial when the narrator makes clear that he is not crazy and the excuse he uses is that no mad man would have ever done what he did and in the way he planned that the old man’s death. He does not want to admit he is mad and desperate. He does not know when he started feeling like that. On the second paragraph he does not recall when the idea entered his mind, but recognizes that once it took place inside his mind, his nightmare started.

Anger:

For the way he proceeded to kill the old man, it can be understood that he is scrupulous and vigilant. The way he would enter the old man’s room for eight days without being heard or seen, almost not breathing, planning very carefully his death, was particularly dreadful. He gets so angry with the “evil eye” he finally decides to terminate the old man’s life once and for all and attacks him. After that the dismembered the old man and hides him in pieces bellow the floor.

Bargaining:

He then enters the third stage. He behaves in a nice way when the police officers ask him to go into the house responding to a neighbor complaint about the old man’s scream. In some way he wants to change his destiny and not look suspicious by trying to be calm, friendly and polite like nothing happened in that house.

Depression:

He feels comfortable until his conscious starts knocking his head and confuses the beating of his heart with the beating of the old man’s heart. He panics thinking that the police officers would listen to the same thing he is listening or suspect that the man is hiding something. His own paranoia and guilt betrays him deeply.

Acceptance:

After pretending to ignore his crime, he confesses his brutal true to those two men, whom he did not recognize as police officers but villains being he the only one. He uncovers the dead pieces of the old man and gives them the beating heart.

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

“The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson opens on a warm June day in a town of about three hundred people. The story takes place in a small village, where apparently people lives in a friendly atmosphere. They speak to each other in a gregarious way and know each other very well like a “big family”. I put “big family” between quotations marks because the end is very surprising compared with the beginning, which is very quiet and supposedly everyone is calm and relaxed. The reader expects something else at the end, like a good prize for the winner. But it all changes when the every year lottery stars. This is a tradition that has been there for many generations.

It is a major event and very weird because they randomly choose one person to be the winner, but is violently stoned by friends and family. The prize is not one we would wish to have. The winner’s luck is Death, by friends and family. The way Jackson describes the people in this village and how friendly they are, suggests that people are not always like they seem to be. She implies that inside every person’s congeniality, there may be an evil one. The villagers killed stone the person who gets the black slot.