Prof. Jessica Penner | OL20 | Fall 2021

Poems! Poems! Poems!

Share your links to your favorite poems in the comments. Simply hit “reply” and paste what you’d like to share. Do this activity by 11:59 PM on Tuesday, November 9!

Come back and read and comment on at least four of your classmates’ poems. Possible topics: What did you enjoy about their poems? Are the poems they’ve shared new to you? Do you have any additional poets they might check out? Do this activity by 11:59 PM on Thursday, November 11!

50 Comments

    • Account Deleted

      The “still I rise” poem was spectacular. What an uplifting and resilient author! I loved the message this poem sends. We should all aspire to be strong regardless of what others may say or what happens to us, we should always rise up.

    • valencia

      i love Let America Be American. This poem make sense because America was never free for poor whites from Great Britain nor the blacks from Africa. The only time American was free was when the native occupy the land.

    • Saba Chaudhry

      Maya Angelou is a very gifted writer her voice is always evident. This poem is one of my favorites. She is resilient and has no care. Her emphasis on “ I Rise” shares such wholesome feelings. Her she had rhyme and she has structure.

    • Account Deleted

      The “what I love about you” poem was beautiful. It’s a poem of someone completely in love. I know because the writer included some simple things that makes him love that person and when you are truly in love, you love everything about that person. I hope to have a love like tho one day. The “a lost love” poem was also very interesting. It shows another love that is full of problems and mistakes. Someone who is regretting the bad that they have done to their significant other. Both poems were great.

    • NIDA KHAWAJA

      I really liked the poem about the hummingbird. It was claiming and the way the words flowed. I really enjoyed the line about the flower. I would love to read more poems like this one.

    • Devi Ramnarine

      I really love this poem, tells us what love can feel like. Love can be blind sometimes.

    • Shagota

      The ” What I love about you” is the softest to my heart. I am a hopeless lover and I love how much the poem makes sense of someone in love. The writer includes such melo and soft things where you know they are utterly in love.

    • Tabitha Demero

      The Bluebird poem really struck some emotion, many people struggle with letting out their feelings of years of captive hurt and pain so other around them won’t know that they are truly sad. lovey really

      • Tabitha Demero

        the bluebird’s authors style or writing is very repetitive, and clear. His voice resembles a man afraid of sharing his hurt to others or his perspective of a man afraid of sharing is pain.

    • Samantha

      I enjoyed reading Bluebird the most. While reading it, it seems to talk about pain and/or depression. The Shield of Achilles was more confusing. The two poems are new to me.

    • NIDA KHAWAJA

      The blue bird poem really hit emotions. they have something going on with them and whenever they wanna do something its being stopped. I think the blue bird is what the person wants to be and let out but its trapped. there was a lot of emotions going on. Reading it you can almost feel it.

    • Shagota

      The bluebird poem is something I see in people everyday and it resonates with the quote ” Hurt people hurt people”. In the poem he’s scared of showing his feelings and all of that build up makes him a hurt person. From his perspective it’s hard to show his feelings and how he feels, it’s a lot of emotion in the poem which I love.

    • Samantha

      I enjoyed reading Cat Moving Kittens more because it talks about motherhood. Your poems are new to me.

  1. Tabitha Demero

    Because I could not stop for death- Emily Dickinson https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death-479
    I Know why the Caged bird sings- Maya Angelou https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48989/caged-bird
    Motives and Thoughts- Lauryn Hill https://genius.com/Lauryn-hill-motives-and-thoughts-annotated
    Weary Blues- Langston Hughes https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47347/the-weary-blues

    • Account Deleted

      The “always in the head” poem was different. It was almost like a story versus a poem. I liked it. The writer had a peculiar personality but the poem was riveting and well written.

    • Account Deleted

      The poem “the will to win” was great although I think the writer went a little overboard on the things you should sacrifice or do to get what you want. LOL! I mean I am all for hard work and dedication and somewhat sacrificing things to get achieve a goal, but you don’t need to lose sleep over it. Either way, great poem.

    • Tabitha Demero

      Im not sure if it was about her vagina of her feelings. But I loved The Woman and Her Thang, the style was so energetic like jazz in a poem and the voice was a mans perspective of a woman and her thang and how other men or society accepts them.

    • valencia

      Fire and Ice is like the earth have a voice and what it would say about the choices if the world had to choose. I like the way the poet gave a voice to something that do not talk.

    • Samantha

      I like your chosen poem “The Haunted” more. It is very dark about how one’s soul still in a house.

    • Account Deleted

      I liked the poem “Ozymandias” you shared. The setting and language used remind me of high fantasy, which is something I enjoy. It makes me think of a faraway land that can only ever exist in words.

  2. fnu nida

    poems

  3. valencia

    In The Village – Derek Walcott 1930-2017
    Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
    so that I am a musician without his piano
    with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
    as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
    full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
    The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
    line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
    but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
    where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
    moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
    years. I have no reason to forgive her
    for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
    past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
    absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
    outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
    for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
    of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
    without the rusty music of my machine. No words
    for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
    of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.

  4. Devi Ramnarine

    Being Short
    People laugh point and stare
    Though I don’t pay them a single glare
    They call me short different and weird
    But with my friend’s support I am tightly geared
    I take a step forward anxious to say
    I’m beautiful in my own way
    For God makes no mistakes

    Noor Narnia

    A Good Friend
    There is nothing like a good friend
    To tell your troubles to.
    Someone to open up with,
    Someone to talk you through,
    The highs; the lows,
    The everyday struggles,
    Someone who knows,
    Your every quirk and flaw,
    Someone who understands your ways,
    And love you after all.

    Mobi World

    • Saba Chaudhry

      I relate to the first poem a lot since I’m short! I think the writer is empowering and attentive. She is aware of what si around her. She takes her insecurity that others have placed in her and found beauty.

    • NIDA KHAWAJA

      I really enjoyed the “Being short ” poem. This poem is very relatable to me. I am the short friend. It was nice to read a poem that is relatable to people. I feel it gives it more feeling. Being the short is not fun. Your height get brought up a lot and at such random times too. I would like to read more poem that people can relate to.

  5. Saba Chaudhry

    When Tomorrow Starts Without Me:
    https://www.nr.edu/jshelton/lyrics/erica_shea_liupaeter/tomorrow_without_me.pdf

    • Liam Escamilla

      “when tomorrow starts without me” touched me. This poem really makes you feel the grief for someone you know or brings memories altogether. I love it, and this poem also shows how memories in general are important.

    • Account Deleted

      I liked “When tomorrow starts with me” It was a really powerful poem that I can relate with. The emotions of loss and past happiness are described really well with the way the words the author uses.

    • NIDA KHAWAJA

      The Poem “Be kind” was interesting to read. I didn’t expect it take that turn. I though going in it was going to be poem about being nice to people and but it wasn’t. I liked how it wasnt so predictable.

    • Devi Ramnarine

      This poem brings alot of memory back since everyone may or may not experience something like this.

  6. Jessica Penner

    I’m loving the poems you shared AND the comments that you’ve made about each others’ choices! Bravo!!!

  7. Shaunna

    1.CINDY WILLIAMS GUTIÉRREZ “THE SMALL CLAIM OF BONES”

    Poems For When Life Is Just Hard


    2.The Path by Paul Laurence Dunbar
    https://theobjectivestandard.com/2019/02/seven-poems-celebrating-free-will/

  8. Shagota

    The bluebird poem is something I see in people everyday and it resonates with the quote ” Hurt people hurt people”. In the poem he’s scared of showing his feelings and all of that build up makes him a hurt person. From his perspective it’s hard to show his feelings and how he feels, it’s a lot of emotion in the poem which I love.

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