"The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of the reign of Queen Victoria in the mid to late 1800s. His poems are notable for very memorable language and he is one of the most quoted poets today.

In "The Charge of the Light Brigade",  Alfred Tennyson uses dactylic meter and repetition to create the imagery of a cavalry charge and to create a mood of impending doom. The poem commemorates one of the worse disasters in modern British military history, where the Light Brigade was slaughtered when it was accidentally ordered to attack Russian cannons in the Crimean war. Thus, the poem laments the error which sent hundreds of men to their deaths. Tennyson's use of dactylic meter creates a rhythm which resembles the thundering of hooves which characterizes most cavalry charges. Furthermore, the rhythm created by the meter serves to force the reader onward, just as the cavalry was forced onward, because it overrides normal stopping points such as lines and punctuation. This, along with the repetition of phrases such as "valley of death" and "half a league", creates a feeling of impending and inevitable doom. It is clear that the soldiers in the charge are doomed, yet just as the reader cannot stop his or her forward progress through the poem the soldiers cannot stop the charge to their deaths. The poet's use of anaphora in the second stanza when he repeats "Theirs not to..." additionally emphasizes the soldier's lack of control over their course towards impending doom. They cannot question or resist their orders, all they can do is carry them out and die, bleeding on the fields of the Crimean peninsula for a pointless war over minor disputes. Tennyson's use of dactylic meter and repetition shows the horror and uncontrollability of war.

"Marks" by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan was born in 1932 and is still alive today. From 1991 to 1995 she was the Poet Laureate of Maryland. Her poems address a diverse range of topics, including family life, motherhood, aging, and loss.

In "Marks", Linda Pastan uses the metaphor of school grading systems to illustrate how people, especially parents, are harmed by the human tendency to judge others. The poem describes the methods that the speaker's family uses to judge her as a mother, describing each judgement method like a grading system. As is the case with many students who are faced with grading systems, the speaker is frustrated, especially considering that she faces three separate grading systems, which shows that the speaker has to deal with completely different expectations from everyone who is dependent on her. The speaker's frustration is made clear in the last line, where, continuing with the metaphor, the speaker says that she is "dropping out". The attitude of the speaker in this poem towards her family duties contrasts with the ideal attitude mothers are supposed to have. Due to the pressure of multiple expectations and constant judgement, the speaker looks at her tasks just like how a student looks at homework, namely as something which must be avoided as much as possible. Parents such as the one described in this poem are particularly faced with constant judgement, but all people have to face nearly constant judgement in today's society. From formal tests such as school tests and job assessments to the unofficial tests in the brains of everyone around us, we all face pressure caused by judgement, even if we are less aware of it than the speaker of this poem.

"[The golf links lie so near the mill]" by Sarah Cleghorn

Sarah Cleghorn lived from 1876 to 1959. She was a member of the naturalist literary movement. She published her first poetry collection in 1917 and her second in 1945.

The meaning of "[The golf links lie so near the mill]" is reliant almost entirely on two words, "laboring" and "play". Using these two words, the author reverses her reader's expectations regarding adults and children to point out the injustice of child labor. Normally, one would expect children to be playing and men to be laboring. However, in this poem it is the children who are laboring and the men who are playing. The exact wording of these two phrases also emphasizes the reversal of expectations. The men are not described as simply "playing" golf but "at play", a phrase usually used to describe children rather than adults. On the other hand, the children are not described as "working" but as "laboring", a word which is more negative as it carries with it the idea of child labor. The author's use of the words "play" and "laboring" shows that this situation is unjust. The reversal of expectations shows that the children should not be working, yet the adults, despite being right next door to the children, are doing nothing about the situation. Furthermore, it is possible that the adults are directly responsible for the plight of the children. The sport which they are playing, golf, is associated with wealth. Therefore, it is possible that some of the adults are managers or factory owners of either this particular mill or other similar locations which employ children. This poem is a powerful criticism of the use of child labor during the industrial revolution, and it achieves most of this effect using only two words.

"To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan was born in 1932 and is still alive today. From 1991 to 1995 she was the Poet Laureate of Maryland. Her poems address a diverse range of topics, including family life, motherhood, aging, and loss.

In "To a Daughter Leaving Home," Linda Pastan uses the situation which the speaker describes to illustrate how the speaker feels towards her daughter. The poem contrasts the mother's feelings about her daughter's bike ride with her daughter's reactions. While the mother is worried and fearful that her daughter will be injured as she bikes away, the daughter is excited almost to the point of recklessness.The mother's concern for her daughter's safety clearly shows her love and affection towards her. However, the wider context of the situation indicates something other than a mother's love for her daughter. As the title indicates, the daughter is about to leave home. At first, this may seem unrelated to the poem's content, as all the poem seems to be is a description of a memory. However, there are several details which indicate parallels between the situation in the memory and the situation of the daughter leaving home. Early in the poem, the speaker describes her surprise at how fast her daughter was learning how to ride her bike. This is similar to how many parents feel that their children grow up faster than they expected, a feeling which is greatly increased when a child leaves home. Additionally, in the last few lines of the poem, the hair of the daughter during her bike ride is compared to "a handkerchief waving goodbye." The metaphor of the handkerchief shows how the bike ride mirrors the current situation. Just as the mother felt anxious about the danger of the bike ride then, she feels anxious about the uncertain future of her child. The two situations in this poem, the one described and the one alluded to, both show how parents react to their children's growth and development.

"Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde lived from 1934 to 1992. In addition to writing poetry, she was a political activist for a variety of issues, including racial equality, LGBT rights, and feminism. Many of her poems were closely tied to her activism. This particular poem, though still related to her activism, is less directly connected.

Lorde uses the speaker in "Hanging Fire" to illustrate how adolescents feel isolated in their struggles. The speaker, who introduces herself as a fourteen year old, spends the entire poem worrying, jumping from on anxiety to another. The poem is written with no particular format or rhyme scheme, emphasizing the disjointed nature of the teenager's anxieties. She goes from worrying about her skin to worrying about death in the space of about two lines, and this pattern of jumping between unrelated anxieties continues throughout the poem. Throughout the poem, the teenager's isolation is emphasized. In addition to repeating the phrase "and momma's in the bedroom/ with the door closed," which shows her isolation from her parents, she also outright states that "Nobody even stops to think about my side of it." Clearly, she thinks that she is alone in worrying about her looks, her classmates' opinion of her, death, and the various other concerns which plague teenagers. Yet as almost anyone who is going through or has gone through puberty can attest, many if not all of these problems are quite common. By contrasting the isolation of the speaker with the ubiquity of her problems, the author shows how the speaker's perception differ from reality. The poem serves as a lament of how people often fail to seek support which could be easier to find than one might think. After all, as the last two lines of the poem say, her mother is only a short distance away.

"Eden" by Emily Grosholz

Emily Grosholz is a contemporary poet and a philosopher. She published this poem, "Eden", in 1992. She is currently a professor Pennsylvania State University.

In "Eden", Emily Grosholz contrasts the naivety of children with the dangers of the world by contrasting simple and childlike language with biblical imagery. At the beginning of the poem, she describes two incidents in which a child confronts mortality, at least indirectly. The language used by the child, which includes poor grammar indicative of one who has only recently begun to understand language, creates a very innocent tone. Like nearly every child who has not undergone some traumatic experience, the child in this poem has little understanding or fear of death. The author compares this understanding of the world to the biblical story of Adam, who was created without sin or death. Thus, the child, who does not understand death, is like Adam, who could not originally die. The biblical image is emphasized when the parent is compared to God, as the parent is a protector who, at least to the child, appears almost omnipotent. Up to this point in the poem, the biblical images are largely benign, serving only to emphasize the existing dynamic between the parent and the child. But in the last stanza, biblical imagery is used to illustrate a more ominous undertone to the situation. While the parent can protect the child from any danger the child will encounter under normal circumstances, she is powerless against much greater dangers. The author uses two specific images from the Garden of Eden story, the snake and the angel which guards the garden after Adam is ejected from it, to illustrate how truly powerless the parent is. This poem resembles the change in understanding which all people face when they grow up, namely that we learn of the true dangers of the world and lose our naive innocence. We have no choice - we must leave the garden.

"Constantly Risking Absurdity" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a member of the Beat poetry movement. He published his most well known poetry collection, A Coney Island of the Mind, in 1958. "Constantly Risking Absurdity" is from that collection.

In "Constantly Risking Absurdity", Ferlinghetti uses acrobatics, especially tightrope walking, as a metaphor for writing poetry. Like acrobats, poets have to tread very carefully, or else they can appear absurd or even, under certain circumstances, die. Though it is rare in modern times for poets to be persecuted for their writings, in earlier periods it was more common. Similarly, just as one misstep can bring death or injury for an acrobat, one wrong word, or even one misplaced word, can ruin an otherwise perfect poem and doom it to being mocked and forgotten. Even the formatting of a poem can make a huge difference as to whether it appears truthful or absurd. In the case of this particular poem, the formatting is a continuation of the metaphor. The lines of the poem alternate between being positioned on the right side of the poem and being positioned on the left. This not only creates a rough line running down the middle of the poem, similar to a tightrope, but it also imitates the careful walking that a tightrope walker would use. Each step is slow and deliberate. Though small details such as single words and formatting are important in all forms of literature, they are especially important in poetry, since poetry tends to be shorter. There is less room for error in a poem, just as there is less room for error when walking on a tightrope than when walking on a normal floor.