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OK, though you guys can still submit your "Road Not Taken" inspired poems, and you can still discuss them, I am going to go ahead and start a new vote:
Mary Oliver, Edgar Allen Poe (sorry, i wanted to give him another chance), and Shel Silverstein.
I vote for Poe! (again)
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OK, Owlgirl, I wrote a free verse poem from the prompt, but its extremely personal and I really dont want to put it online…but trust me, I wrote it.
I vote for Poe as well. He has just about the best poetry for discussing — so deep, so beautiful, so…daaaah, i dont know what to say!!!!!!!!!!
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Hermione, that is totally okay. though if you ever change your mind….
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I'm not going to be very commited to this, but, totally Shel Silverstein. I really like the poems he writes. Some are really funny, but some have much deeper meanings.
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Sydney, Aubrey, Rosebud, please vote.
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Mary Oliver (free verse!)
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Poe!
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TOP!
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Okay…one more day to vote!
So far Poe is in the lead!
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Sorry guys! My family just returned from a camping trip. I vote for Edgar Allen Poe! (Although he is already winning. 🙂
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Shel Silverstein!
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Aaand, the votes are in:
Edgar Allen Poe: 4 votes
Mary Oliver: 1 vote
Shel Silverstein: 2 votes
Edgar Allen Poe it is!!!!!!!!!!!
Yay, he's one of my favorites!
I think we'll do two of his poems, since they are so varied.
"A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allen Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
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Okay, I'm going to talk about the second part (beginning with "I stand amid the roar…") because I'm still dissecting the second part.
The second part is a metaphor. Poe is comparing time to golden grains of sand that slip through his fingers. He tries to hold on to them:
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
but they slip through his fingers. in other words, time slips away.
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
He wishes he could hold onto the grains of sand tighter, and save them from the waves below that consume them. The passage of time is the waves.
He weeps when the grains fall….but why? I pose a question to my fellow poetry fanatics: Is it that he does not want death to come, that he is afraid of death, or is it sheer woe that you cannot control time?
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