Anthology Introduction!

1000 Word Anthology Introduction & Conclusion:
Theme: "Past regrets and Future prayers and wishes"

An anthology is a good way to learn and compare different writing styles by putting poems together into a collection based on a particular theme or topic in which then the person becomes like an apprenticed expert by using the knowledge gained of what a poem is and what makes a poem a good poem that may be opinionated, but can let others try to understand why this is believed by the person who is editing the poems in their collection. To edit an anthology there has to be some obtained knowledge behind what elements and substances are included in works of poetry and how they are used in getting the reader to try and interpret the meaning or figure the words and style to be considered a poem and many poets try to find their poetry worth reading, whether it being more complex such as Dickinson’s “When I hoped, I recollect” or simple to interpret such as Cope’s “Variation of Belloc’s “Fatigue”. A poet can keep these characteristics in mind to use in writing their poem(s) along with various poetic fundaments like poem structure; figurative language(metaphors, personification, apostrophe, pun, metonymy); sound effects; rime; spacing and format; stanza's; meter; stressors, and various imagery all of which make quite an impact for the reader that the poet may intend to do in order to help the reader understand the mood of the poem, speech, and background knowledge that the poet wants to come off through the poem.

My theme for my anthology is about life in general in it's contents that people make mistakes and do things that they may not like but can learn from. Then usually when something from the past does not end in a desired result these people tend to wish or pray for things to get better, so that is why I title my anthology and make the poems in it part of the theme, "Past Regrets and Future Prayer & Wishes." In this theme I think that I can find many different interesting and entertaining poems that could fall under this category also being useful in distinguishing various elements of poetry in editing poet's poems and then analyzing what makes a poem better in my opinion and whose poem can the reader see great imagery and saying who does it better in showing more of a certain poetic characteristic by comparing poems looking into these particular fundamentals of poetry.
I tried to choose and put poems in my anthology that were very diverse in format and in poet's lifetimes in history and showing how poems have developed, are similar, and dissimilar than other poems from around the same times, more recent, or later time periods. I like how sometimes knowing what events are going on in that poets lifetime can help the reader interpret and understand their poems better. No matter the poem being interpreted or understood in the same way as another reading it or by the poet who wrote the poem, it does not make a person bad at reading poetry and with that in mind it is a good idea to learn about poetry and everything that makes up the many diverse types of poems to at least give someone a start on why poetry can be hard to get through and yet knowing more about it can give the reader confidence even in attempting it.

There are many poem’s named for the exact structure they are created in and the structure of a poem is based on the number of lines, number of stanzas, the patterns of words or rhyming scheme’s, and the overall lyric length and genre in a poem. Some various kinds of poems whose structures make them what they are include sonnets, epigram, haiku, limerick, cinquain, quatrain, terza rima, sestet, villanelle, triolet, and sestina(“song of the sixes”), which some poem formats such as these kinds of poems is important to distinguish between, so that being a reason for choosing some for my anthology.
A certain poem with one of these particular structures and fitting in with the theme of my anthology is “Triolet” by Bridges that I included for comparison and editing along with Cope’s epigram poem. A “Triolet” is a short lyric where 2 opening lines repeated at the end 2 lines of the poem. The poem has 8 rhymed lines in which Bridges makes somewhat of a short poem that still tells so much in a dramatic story behind the speakers experiences. The end rhyming words Bridges uses are did not "guess" and "distress" and that goes along in meaning with the other rhymed words being "disaster" and "hard to master" that also correlate. These exact rhymed words in order can associate in interpretation of the poem better when "guess" goes to "disaster" that represents an event that was unseen and turned out bad while the result being "distress" due to a love relationship that was "hard to master" and difficult to make it work out. Although the lines are repetitive which I think can sometimes seem more like fillers in a poem and really wanting to stand out by the poet may be the primary purpose for doing is one style that I tend to not like as much, Bridges poem I don't think looks too excessive by doing this repetition of lines. the lines repeated are in some word order, but punctuation makes quite a difference in my opinion and this repetition I think is crucial in what I like most about Bridges poem "Triolet". The first line being a statement is later made into a question that still very much stands out both ways of writing it.   Other than the 2 repeated lines there are two lines of the six that are different and add more to the poem's understanding which would normally not be as good a reading in my opinion but this poem I find to be one of my favorites and a good example of a poem.


Another poem that is categorized due to it’s specific length and the tone is an epigram that is only two lines long that is also like a transformation of an existing poem that agrees with the original poet, but has a wit to it that makes it comedic. An epigram like the one I am referring to "Variation on Belloc's "Fatigue“ by Cope is found to be quite entertaining although very short that looks like it could just be a quote but is a couplet poem but can be made as a quatrain by definition of what an epigram is. Cope’s poem like Bridges has end rhyming words such as “rhyme” and “time”, and have one complete idea in a single sentence although made into two lines. The short length and what is stated in them makes for a good conversation piece about a class society and so I find it to still be thought out and meaningful also being good reading. I can see many who can relate to either one of these poems in one way or another and they are not too complex in their meanings or in reading.

There are two major categories of poems that are directed towards there being a particular format that the poem was made to follow or not and these two groups are open form(ex. free verse) versus closed form poems. Open form verse are put into groups like prose(paragraph), visual, and concrete(visual without much sentence structure rather more picture or image of visual objects that make up the page not being very literally meaningful). Most of the poems in my anthology are closed formed since they are created in a preexisting pattern or closed structure, but I included at least one open form poem to look at. “Easter wings” is an open form poem of visual poetry that is unique in showing an image, while still considered a poem due to the content and the rime, rhythm, and precise placement in which the words that are in the poem more than once are in or around the same part of the line and in a line of similar length that looks to be in the same portion of the whole silhouette too. The words “Most poor; with thee(lines 5-6)” and “Most thin. With thee(15-16)” are in the skinny middle part of the wings and the words “… .. … .. … … flight in me.(lines 10 and 20)” are both the end words of the last lines of in the stanzas, which Herbert must have done on purpose. I also see the indentation and word spacing of “As larks, harmoniously,(line 8)” that were put so to make the image symmetrical in shape. The open form poetry can be hard to create and perfect, but when it is done well it can make for a very entertaining and still be meaningful for the reader.

Free verse does not make a poem any less of a good poem just because it doesn’t always follow any of the basic poem features such as rime scheme, meter, or line and stanza particulates; it just can make it a bit harder for the reader in determining if some lyric or writing is a form of poetry.
Many poems have been created by people who are well-known as being poets, but others are created by people who are not known and don’t necessarily have a career in writing poetry. Some of those who do write for meaning or just for fun have been known to make great poems. One poem by an anonymous poet had language that they used in it that I don’t think they were even alive in the time period basing their characters speech in this manner, yet I still found the poem to be a good one. That is why I made my fourth poem “Little Lessons” which at times someone may try to write a poem and it not turn out to be one, but this one in it’s form and various poetry elements makes it a poem still. In this poem there is a story with two main characters and intends to be like a moral lesson or entertaining, which normally doesn’t always make a poem that great, but I see some rhymes and assonance in the second and fourth lines of each stanza and the sixth and eighth end words rhyming together in each of the three stanzas containing eight lines each. There is some repetition of the summed up refrain of the poem about “learning from other men” in lines 8, 16, and 24. “Little Lessons” being like the same language in the following poem by Anacreon who was actually from the times of this speech does not have the same rhyming scheme that fulfills each line of the poem like Anacreon’s does; that gives a distinction of poets from the past to some more recent in decades.

Going in order of poems in my anthology, the fifth poem is by Anacreon who lived in the early biblical times which I figure telling what people from early period’s in history had written for poetry would be great to look at also. I chose the poem “The Wish” by Anacreon, since I like to vary in my anthology and this poem I find to be more complex in reading for me not knowing the words, especially with the language and speaking during that time period, but reminding me of Shakespeare and I wanting to try to figure this poem out in English and ways I understand and then afterward decide if I think it is a good poem having much meaning and what qualities I see it contains in it after-all, such as figure’s of speech and so on. The rhyming of the words that are not all heard in our everyday language goes together really well with the poem’s main idea. Anacreon did all end rhyming in this particular poem’s structure being AABBCCDDEEFFJJCC, so rhyme scheme sounds while reading it tend to be used quite a lot back then like it is with some poets nowadays. I can see a bunch of figures of wanting to be something else than what he is and is like a backward personification in which he doesn’t long to be human but a thing instead, which is interesting to do. The poem is appealing in this way and can arouse feelings and there is plenty of imagery there that makes it possible for the reader to put themselves in his place when reading it or try to understand his feelings of what he means. Now that I know the conversion I do think this is a good poem and think Anacreon’s poem did mean a lot to him and that there are people who can relate to this in life longing for things that may never be possible or get the chance to have happen and that is a good and common occurrence in some people’s lives wishing for some goal and great accomplishment and so interpreting Anacreon in this way makes this poem even more relatable for people that were from his time and all throughout history making it a good poem in my opinion.

My sixth and seventh poem choices are by the same poet and since some poet’s have a certain style and others don’t always make poems according to some specific trait of theirs like with Dickinson’s spacing technique, I thought that including a few poems by the same poet would be interesting to do. Yeats was one poet I chose to look at two different poems of his and compare them. Yeat’s poems I look at are “He wishes for the cloths of Heaven” and “A Drunken Man’s Praise of Sobriety.” These poems I chose to compare to each other and to poems by other poets and I discovered that the poems are similar in that both Yeats’s poems are only two stanzas and about the same length. I find quite a few differences in them both though since in the poem “A Drunken Man's Praise of Sobriety” there is a rhyming scheme and in “He wishes for the cloths of Heaven” there are not any rhyming words that I see but just repeated words like as the last word in each line is at least said one more time at the end of another line and repeated words some stated twice in one line, so all these words must be really meaningful to him and he wants the readers to notice them making them stand out over again. Another thing I see different is that the first poem “A Drunken Man’s Praise of Sobriety” has spelling that doesn’t look to be spelled wrong, but in “He wishes for the cloths of heaven” there is a certain word that is spelled differently than what comes up in the dictionary which is the word “Enwrought” but yet again it might be like a British spelling or something like that. I also found that both are quite sad with an elegy kind of mood from my interpreting, but the second more depressing which might be a popular style in Yeats’s poems bringing up so many feelings and yet is unique for my theme since both fitting in to having wishes and regrets that I hope is not what is seen in all his writings, since I don’t find it good to always fret and keep stressing about the past, but rather better to try to change these and grow on or move forward from them. Yeats’s poems are both useful for my anthology and I do like them both, but would also like to hopefully get some more hopeful and happier poems that don’t always have a regret in order for the wishes that are said to be made. I also noticed that the word tread was used in Yeats and Anacreon’s poems and both being sad so this helps make a distinguishable feature of similarity in two of the poems by different poets I have included works by in my anthology.

Comparing Yeats’ poems to Anacreon’s poem I really don’t find too much difference in their setup and styles besides the language due to time periods, but otherwise the stanzas and there being some rhyming words at the end of some lines in both poems like Anacreon’s rhyming “anoint-joint” and “deck-neck” and in Yeats’s “A Drunken Man’s Sobriety” poem there are rhyming words such as “still- fill” and “punk-drunk,” so these are both great aspects of poetry. There is even as much imagery in both poems that can be figured in every line although Yeats might be more of a single or few scenes rather than in Anacreon’s that has more of completely different ideas during the instances in time than the dancing and graveyard, but I still think both are really good poems and they both are very emotional from whoever is speaking’s point of view being able to also place yourself in the drunken man’s body or the person he is dancing with, so both have great emotional appeal.
Many of the poems I’ve chosen that do rhyme have a common trait of rhyming lines of even numbers together like two and four with six and eight and sometimes ten and twelve that can be seen in “A Drunken Man’s Sobriety” and the same two with four and six with eight in “Little Lessons” so the stanza would have a ABCB scheme. Other poems have end rhyming that are in lines counted off by two’s and Brome’s “Humility” follows this pattern similar to Anacreon’s but is AABBCCDD in each of the two stanzas which shows conformity in the closed form structure of poetry.
Then my ninth and tenth poems are two more poems that are by a single poet that lived around the same time as Yeats, but both poets are different in their poetic structure and ideas. This poet I also took two poems from for my anthology is Dickinson and the poems of hers are “When I hoped, I recollect” and “Success is counted sweetest” that both contain her trademark spacing using the – symbol to represent a stop or pause for the reader. The poetry term for a pause being cesura(e), so I picked “When I hoped, I recollect” of her many others due to it's content and format that is three stanzas of mainly iambic trimeter except for the first two lines of the second stanza that adds a fourth stress at the end of the line. Dickinson's style has end rhyming of the second and fourth lines in each stanza and the structure is set up according to an ABCB scheme that makes it unique. I noticed in all of her poems she has spacing using (---) throughout her poems that is a good trait describing her style in writing, but this poem has the least spacing caesura where the reader is supposed to pause within the line of verse. The only cesura I see with the (---) to separate words is in the first line of the last stanza around the word "-dying-" that makes it stand out along with the end exclamation point. I see more punctuation in this than in "When I hoped, I recollect" and more rhyming, but I still find that both poems are good in the structure and format that just sets them apart more as being uncommon.  

I chose my eleventh poem that is by someone who had a poem published in a literary journal and is not particularly a known poet in history who writes many poems but this possibly being his only poem written. The poem is called “Love yourself, be yourself” by Blackburn and he makes it out to be a sweet emotional poem with the speaker asking a person who he directly addresses(apostrophe) “Why.” The poem’s words and format goes well and is unique in being centered in five stanzas and the last line made specifically to be the only a few lines in that stanza to stand out since I think it is the main point that the poem was to endure; “Why would you want to be yourself If you do not love yourself?(lines 26-27)”. Blackburn does it differently in not being a story, but there being something that gives the reader background thinking of what the speaker is trying to express feeling-wise to another who must not be happy about them self. There are some related ideas and representations that are put in a line that don’t go normally go together and these metaphors like telling someone to “Open the window that stops the lovebirds from flying music into your heart(lines 13-14), which is not a quality we are capable of doing but it makes a it is strong statement that has an idea of emotional appeal along with the “Sweat out your self-doubt (line 9)” that is interesting wording that we as human’s sweat but not part of our views and thinking, so it is put in words another way than get rid of you self-doubt that would just not be as good of poem in my opinion without the metaphoric figurative language in it. “Love yourself, be yourself” is a poem that I can relate to feeling and is appealing, so even someone who is not experienced can write really impressive stuff like Blackburn has.

“O Captain My Captain” is twelfth in my collection and has a formatted structure that each line is to be around the same length within the stanza making them be a certain shape throughout the poem. There are figures of speech that have end rhyming in lines 6 and 8 of each stanza; these rhymed words being “red(stanza 1, line 6)” and “dead(stanza 1, line 8,” “head(stanza 2, line 6)” and “dead(stanza 2, line 8),” and “tread(stanza 3, line 6)” and “dead(stanza 3, line 8)” that are useful in their denotation but also for connotation since these ideas are all related to the perceived concept of death. Again the word “tread” is a familiar symbol when the poem is sad like in Anacreon’s and Yeats’s that I had included earlier. Whitman did this poem well in symbolism and representation of a captain dying metaphor for the president dying both being people who are important to the main objective which the captaon who is boss in sailing the ship and the president is the boss in running the country. The poem’s tone is one of sorrow and worry for what to happen due to loss of someone that had control and kept things together among those among the ship or the citizens of the country. That is why I find “O Captain My Captain” to be such a great poem in it’s structure and appeal.
The thirteenth poem I chose is “Birthday Cake” that does not contain the ordinary rhyming scheme, but is made into three set stanzas of six lines(sestet) and the words Goodman uses are so vivid for the imagining such as sight and touch from the lines, “ to eat the fire and not the cake and drip the fires from my teeth,(lines 5-6)”. These elements needing to notice can be vital to making a good poem and so I included it too in my anthology for reading various poems.

My next poem in my anthology is “Ballad of Birmingham” by Randall is one full of conversation among two characters like that of “Little Lessons” that could be made into a small skit. Looking at poems like this one is similar to Shakespeare’s poems that he had formulated for his screen plays which makes it a diverse form of poetry, but just as moving. From the beginning quote,
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play, And march the streets of Birmingham In a Freedom March today?”
the reader can get an idea of the relationship of the two characters and what events are occurring so the poem has a setting during a specific historic time that gives more input and emotional impact for the reader to try and relate to. Randall describes life and death that the he must see as inevitable and unstoppable; when the time comes dying happens no matter how hard someone tries to prevent it. The format that a poet makes their poem out to be and the language that is used can easily show their opinions and views about life through their writings and this poem by Randall I see does this and a reason for having this be the fourteenth poem in my anthology collection plus it makes for an exceptional poem.

“Prayer” by Hughes is also a poem the reader can tell what the times were and what the poet’s feelings about their views in life are, especially in Hughes poem what stands out is that it is one of ethnicity and personal identity. It is a shorter but the speech and repetition of words “Gather up” results in passion being heard by the speaker who wants people to “Gather up…. In the arms of your pity(and love)” . The end rhyming of words in lines being “city” with “pity” and “love” with “above” that can then be linked in meaning being that he feels the city is in pity and there is a need for love from above, so word choice helps make Hughes poem great.
Other poems are important due to the poet being not just ethnically identified but also gender identity can make a difference in expressing certain aspects of life and feelings towards mis/treatment of their kind and inequality is a common appealing subject for high emotions in writing, so after Hughes identity poem I admitted two poems by women poets that talk of gender-roles in their societies through history.
My fifteenth and sixteenth poems are Millay’s “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed” and Dove’s “Daystar.” Sometimes have more stress placed on them due to their inborn characteristics that throughout history has made many be seen and treated as inferior or a minority, which provides for very emotion evoking times and experiences that the poets speak of. Millay accumulates her poem from the first two lines
“I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind”
and goes on to talk about her being treated according to what society had made distinctions about the qualities a woman should have. In Dove’s poem she goes into an actual scene of what takes place in her life being a woman who is a wife and a mother. The poem setup without any rhyme or usual poem elements, but more of a chapter taken out of story that is narrated so this is another example of an open form poem that could be from or made into a whole story that poetry is impressive to be changed from one kind of literature form to another.


I looked at many short poems, but it is important to have long poems too being that there are many that have made great poems in their significance and overall poetic elements. The last few poems I included in my anthology are quite lengthy and some kind of heavy in reading. The first being a poem by Bradstreet called “The Prologue” is defined as an opening to a story or writing, that I wanted to go in the beginning being the first of the longer poems I thought my anthology should be organized in this way and it still goes along with gender identity themed poems that I had just talked about. Bradstreet wrote “The Prologue” and I think the whole form of this poem being greater in length; a sestet poem of 6 lines in each stanza, which many poems being shorter makes including this poem for editing better to conceit and compare to those of smaller length and informality in structure to. Bradstreet being so long has really good word choice with end rhymes, exact rhymes(“plain,” “pain” and “sure,” “cure”), eye rhymes(such as “able” and “irreparable”, assonances, and consonaces(slant rhyme like “forth” and “worth”) in all the lines of every stanza. This can be hard to do with the poem and not making sense, so this being such a long poem and being interpretable and apprehensible by the reader makes it really impressive and an excellent piece of writing. I also chose this poem, since the subject that Bradstreet brings up is very emotional for her and telling of the times and so the theme full gender-related responsibilities and her trying to stand up for her beliefs and a cause in writing this poem is riveting to me and a reason I like it, although I normally do not like to read too long of poems, the purpose of “The Prologue" I think makes this poem very worth reading.

“The Writer” by Wilbur is also very lengthy, but different with there being an amazing metaphor and not much rhyming as was in “The Prologue” that makes it different, but very good in my opinion. Wilbur's poem's structure is stanza's of three lines or a tercet and is blank verse without rhyming, but yet it still has an emotional tone and attitude by the speaker with closed form poem format. The tone is like wonder by the father and quiet being "silent" and just "hearing" the daughter instead of interrupting her, he stands aside letting her do her own thing and not sure what she has in mind. This attitude I think many parents can relate to and is fairly easy to try to feel how the speaker feels. There is very much imagery and symbolism within the poem of life's journey and obstacles being compared to a "ship carrying cargo" and a "starling(bird) being helpless stuck in the room" almost being stranded and trying to survive there although given a chance to get out just waiting for it to notice and try to reach the window. The visual imagery is grand and the hearing the "commotion of the typewriter(line 5)," "starling chirping and dropping to the floor(line 24)," and "the chain hauled over a gunwale(line 6)" are vivid in my imagination. There can also be figured the tactile imagery also of the "clamor of strokes(lines 14-15)" of the "typewriter-keys(line 5);" and the reader can put themself in the daughter's shoes or at least I can remember being off in a room trying to do my homework or just writing for my own reasons, so that can make for even tactile imagery by the reader. The idea of being open to the world and that outside of one's present reach is a great concept that I like to believe that trying for something gives anyone a chance to achieve anything, even if thought to be impossible or improbable it is always better to look for a glimmer of hope that can be concluded among the poems in my anthology theme.

“The Mother” is really emotional and has a mix of similarity to the other two long poems in which it contains metaphors and some rhyming so I chose it next. I chose to include "The Mother" for my being able to compare the format and style used, especially with the many kinds of figurative language in Gwendolyn's poem that gives a strong feeling in stressing "You“, who is the apostrophe she is addressing, as if the unborn fetus or baby could hear the reasoning and the woman's speech. The thirty-three line poem is full of rhyming words like most end rhymed words and assonances‘ along with a hint of alliteration like in line 14 with the reiteration of the consonant ‘s’, “I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized”. The repetitive use of the word "never" concluding that due to not being born there are many things among the principle of human life that the baby normally does have, but in this case the nonexistent life means that they don't even have a chance for the ability and "never" will. Gwendolyn's precise word choice is memorable in it pulling the poem together even more along with the symbols of having a baby and what goes with it such as "thumb-sucking, crying baby tears, and having little or no hair" provides a lot of imagery. There is visible imagery, sound imagery, and some tactile imagery(touch) too. Imagery being hard to master in all the senses, but Gwendolyn pulls much of it off in this poem of hers.


Comparing those various poems to the longest by Bryant that is 82 lines in length. This poem named “Thanatopsis” that I have as my last poem in my collection to leave it on an optimistic note even with it being very long in lyric I think the general idea the poet has about life and death is a more calming one, so I decided to end my anthology with this being the last poem in it. “Thanatopsis” has an interesting word choice with much alliteration in the first words of a verse and some in the end words beginning with a specific consonant. This poem of all the poems has the most imagery for sight I noticed like with “golden sun, ” “heaven,” “woods,” “wilderness,” and again I noticed when talking of “death” the poet uses the word “tread” a few lines later, so particular ideas must bring up the same words and figures in mind even by quite diverse poets. What makes this poem so great I think is the topic of death and how people should think about it differently than the typical sad and scary occurrence, but more of what comes next that is more positive since in Bryant’s view it isn’t necessarily the end that everyone is alone in, but something that all get to be with others again. So the poet’s overall idea and the words and structure of the poem for description into this idea makes “Thanatopsis” one of my favorite poems although really long.


I also included a song in as a piece at the very end of my anthology, since I think it is important to distinguish various writing’s from others even though all forms are seen to be artistic forms of expression.

Poems can be difficult to spot since they can also look or sound to be some other types of written works like a story for a book, or a quote, and even a song. In order to help someone point out a poem from another literary work I am including a song as the last piece in my anthology and comparing that with it's traits that separate it from a poem, although there are times that written works can be considered both a song and a poem, but I will go into depth on why some songs that seem to be poems a lot of the time are not. Don't think that a poem can't be made to be a song though, because some poets have used verses and ideas from poems to create a song. This specific order being how my anthology is organized for reading alike poems that are also different making it easier for comparison being by each other in my anthology’s collection of poems.