THE+BIG+WRAP+UP

All four of my poems have many things in common however, the most evident is the fact that all of them include the theme of searching. Whether it's searching out of curiousness or it is searching because of regret and remorse, they are all searching for the same thing which is an answer. The theme of searching is evident because in all of these poems they include questions. Questions such as 'how will I hide?' or ' Don't I shine and glow?" They also include a lot of inner thinking, such as: 'I am too absent-spirited to count The loneliness includes me unawares' and 'h e thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like--just as I--Was out of work--had sold his traps--No other reason why.' The reason I say this is because often when a person is confused about something and they are looking for answers, their mind will often wander and try to use things such as comparing thinking of past mistakes thinking. To get an answer a person would use past memories and present things to think what it involves. This does not often use a lot of logical thinking and deductive thinking, instead it involves really thinking about the actions of others and what was going through their head at the time. I also think they are similar because none of them end with a very settling feeling, they all keep the reader wondering. For example, one poem ends with' ain't we black?' and another one ends with 'To scare myself with my own desert places'. While another one ends with "or help to half a crown" this do not answer the questions. The poet seems to be asking himself or herself and the readers but rather giving conclusions and for the reader to further think and imagine what is next. I think it is a very good way to end a poem especially one that is asking questions the whole time. Although it is not as satisfying, it is very tricky because it creates a lot of extra meaning to the poem. For example, the poem by Maya Angelou ends with 'ain't they black?' this does not answer the question ain't they bad? But rather leaves the reader think about what the poet is talking about. We wonder, how she is talking about race and how she is talking about age and how she challenges society. She wants the readers to come to their own conclusions based on the information given which in my mind is what a great poem should do.

However, these poems are also in their own ways different, which is to be expected when reading four poems by four different authors. Although they all follow the theme of searching, they do not all seem to have the same meaning. For example, the first poem, The Man he Killed, I think means that life is too meaningful to waste; within a split second of war a life is ended. The second poem called Question I think tells the reader to look at life from many different perspectives not just from one's ow. Then I think the third poem Dessert Places means we can find inner peace in the strangest places. I also think the fourth poem Ain't that Bad? challenges society to not always go along with the crowd but to form our own opinions based on our own prior knowledge. Also not only do each of these poems have theirown meaning, but they also have their own conclusion. For example, two of the poems end with questions, while the other two don't. Although they all end with unsettling feelings that leave the reader wondering. They do not all end all end with a question as Angelou's poem does. The reason I think that the meanings are so different from the theme is because the theme itself does not portray a message but rather sets up something for success or something to create a message. However the meaning I think is the message that the reader gets from the poem whether it is the meaning the poet wants you to get or its not. One of the poems that I choose may have not seemed like a poem about searching and that is the Robert Frost poem called Dessert Places. This happens to be my favorite. The reason is because it has the most complex question which is, 'why does that place he is in give him such peace?' This is because he describes it to be a very barren place, one without a lot of people and yet he still finds that he gets joy and peace for standing there. To the reader and even himself, this is puzzling but to me it is the beauty of the poem. The meaning being you don't always have to have reason for something sometimes its just instinctive sometimes it natural and so you sometimes in the unlikey places you might find your home or a inner peace. This was the message I got whether it was the message Robert Frost intended or not, this is what I understood the meaning to be. These four poems I enjoyed reading, but most of all what I enjoyed most about them is looking for answers that went beyond the actual poem. Answers that not even the poet has, but answers that challenge, contradict and question.