Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge provides several Romantic themes and ideals such as mystery and the value of nature in his poem "Kubla Kahn." In the first line, Kubla Kahn resides in an exotic place called Xanadu, a pleasure dome placed on a sacred river which shows the kinship of nature. The exotic "measureless caverns" proves that nature is physically greater than man. The "sunless sea" provides mystery within the poem. A shift takes place that puts a mysterious, wild, and possibly dangerous outlook on nature. The forests are "ancient as hills" stating that nature came before man and is therefore superior. The speaker takes the reader to a different realm which becomes obvious when he states "ancestral voices [are] prophesying war" and it is believed that he took opium to achieve an alternate state of consciousness. The speaker wants to obtain the vision and relive it over and over again by building the pleasure dome in the sky and capturing the mystery and beauty; even though the people will fear his holy power and say "beware! Beware! / he's drunk the milk of Paradise."

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

This video possesses satire by addressing a serious problem in America: obesity. Instead of looking for solutions for a problem that Americans are widely criticized for, this video reports how a new invention, the fast food feedbag, creates a way for people to consume food without having to move. One simply straps the feedbag to one's face and then eats. It is that simple. One man raves, "sometimes I don't feel like moving my arms, so this way you can just have it on your face, close to your mouth, so you don't have to pick anything up." This humorous news report takes a serious stance on this ridiculous invention by claiming how "convenient" and "hands free" the feedbag is. Satire and humor are cleverly used throughout the report.

VIDEO:

http://www.theonion.com/video/new-wearable-feedbags-let-americans-eat-more-move,14238/

If Poisonous Minerals

By J. Donne

Donne makes a very significant shift by using an immensely defiant tone in the first 8 lines but then moves to a remorseful voice in the rest of the poem. In this Shakespearian sonnet, Donne uses an ABBA rhythm: 1 quatrain, 2 quatrain, 3 quatrain, couplet. The shift occurs between the second and third quatrain. Throughout the whole poem, the speaker is talking to God which is prayer or an apostrophe; but he is talking to himself as well which also makes this a soliloquy.

In the first 8 lines, the speaker states inanimate objects that have killed people, yet, have not gone to hell. "If poisonous minerals... cannot be damned, alas, why should I be?" (1-4). It becomes evident that the speaker has committed a terrible crime, most like murder perhaps, and comes the conclusion that the God only sends humans to Hell is because we have reason. He asks, "Why should intent or Reason, born in me, Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?" (5-6). He ponders why would God give him these attributes when they will cause him to go to Hell. The tone is declarative and explanatory as well. The next 6 lines take a dramatic shift into a sorrowful and regretful tone.

Lines 9-14 suddenly presents a remorseful tone. The speaker begs God to forget him because he has sinned. "...drown in it my sins' black memory...I think it mercy if thou wilt forget" (12-14). It's ironic because most people ask God to remember them and not forget them but the speaker feels unworthy of God's recognition and wants to be forgotten. He uses an allusion of Noah and the Flood, "And my tears, make a Heavily Lethean flood" (11). The speaker uses this reference to empathize the grief and sorrow he is filled with from his sins. Overall, Donne uses the shift to capture every emotion he is filled with.

To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell

To His Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

"Had we but world enough, and time,/

This coyness, lady, were no crime."

(1-2)

Through the eyes of the speaker, the world does not provide enough time for his lady lover to be coy and not have sex with him; therefore, this a crime. Throughout the rest of this poem, this lusty lover tries to persuade his mistress into having a sexual relationship with him. This was originally a Carpe Diem poem which means "seize the day" and in this poem, that message is exactly what the speaker is trying to communicate to his mistress.

The denotation and connotation in this poem is used quite frequently in order to stress the importance of having sex before time runs out. In line 24, "Deserts of vast eternity" is referring to death. He is stating that the only that lies ahead of them is death and so they must take advantage of their prime and have sex before it is too late. In line 22, "Time's winged chariot hurrying near" is emphasizing that life's a race against time. In this line, chariot represents a race or war even, meaning time is their enemy. "The grave's a fine and private place,/ But none, I think, do there embrace" (32-33) these two lines mean a complexity of things but in simple terms, the grave here means marriage and in the speaker's eyes, this means no sex. Finally, in line 39, "...like amorous birds of prey" is referring to two lovers attacking each other. There is a handful of figurative language throughout this poem as well.

The figurative language used in this poem confirms the idea that the speaker is only interested in sex and not anything more. In line 11 "My vegetable love should grow" is overall a bad and sleazy pick up line. Vegetables take a long time to grow and then they rot. Instead of using this word, the speaker should have used fire which is passionate or a tree because it means that their love would last forever because they would establish roots. In like 31 "The grave's a fine and private place" is metaphor for death but also, it proves that the speaker views old age and death as the same thing. An examples of a simile is used in line 24, "Sits on thy skin like a morning dew." Overall, To His Coy Mistress is a poem of lust and the lines men will say in order to obtain sex with a woman.

The Man He Killed -Thomas Hardy

The Man He Killed

By Thomas Hardy

In his poetry, Thomas Hardy often protested man’s inhumanity to man. As a strong opponent to the Boer War, in which the British fought the Boers for the control of South Africa, Hardy wrote his poem, “The Man He Killed.” Hardy reveals the reality that soldiers in wars often merely carry out orders of their leaders without understanding the motives of war.
This poem focuses on the role of random fate in the lives of two young soldiers as they meet each other in battle. The speaker reflects on the fact that if he and the soldier he kills had only met earlier in a pub, they might have been friends and shared a beer. He then goes on to convince himself that because they were both in the infantry, he had to shoot him “Because he was my foe” (10). Even as he rationalizes with himself, his words prove unconvincing. He then wonders to himself why his enemy joined the army and if it was for the same reason as his own. He imagines that neither of them had any solid reason to join the war other than being out of work and needing the salary. In this poem, Hardy captures the irony of the fact that most soldiers do not join the army for lofty patriotic purposes, but rather out of the impulse of personal need. By focusing on the meaningless of this soldier’s death, Hardy reiterates the absurdity and senselessness of war.
Throughout the poem, Hardy uses literary devices of irony, repetition, and imagery. When the young soldier kills his enemy, he ironically realizes that his enemy might have been his friend and might have had no other reason the join the war than he did. Hardy uses repetition in the lines such as: “face to face”; “I shot at him” and “I shot him dead”; “you shoot a fellow down”; “he was my foe” and “my foe of course he was” to emphasize how the soldiers trying the persuade himself that what he did was right. Finally, Hardy uses the image of an “ancient inn” and a “nipperkin” and a “bar” and “half a crown” as a contrast to his images of war. These images symbolize civilized conversations between friends contrasted with confronting each other in a battle field.
With this short poignant poem, Hardy protests war by putting a human face on it.

Winter by William Shakespeare
The speaker is a family member who is likely to be the most respected out of the family. His occasion for writing this poem confirms his dislike of winter and the purpose of it allows the reader to be empathetic and feel the hardships he goes through during this season. The literary devices shown in this poem is irony:
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
"Tu-whit, tu-who!"
A merry note (6-8)
The word merry stands out because the rest of the poem is contains very negative content. Another device is the use of paradox as shown in the quote above as well. Stating what the owl hoots is a use of onomatopoeia. After reading this poem I felt disdained towards winter which I believe Shakespeare was trying the achieve.