Poem Response Essay

In just one paper, I am going to go from two inspirational poems, to a more depressing one. The inspirational poem I will be responding to is "The Tyger", written by William Blake. This piece is by far one of my favorite poems read. I read it often just to remind me not to wimp around with my lifting and my getting bigger, just like the song by Survivor, "Eye of the Tiger", does for me. It keeps in mind what it's going to take to do this. The second piece of inspiration I like is, "I will put Chaos into fourteen lines", by Edna St. Vincent Millay. On a depressing side of things, I am then moving on to a more disheartening type of poem. This poem is "Facing It", by Yusef Komunyakaa.

In "The Tyger", by Blake, I really enjoy many lines of this poem. This whole poem gets me going. In line six, the words "Burnt the fire of thine eyes" give me a picture of a tiger lying in the jungle and all you can see are his eyes lying somewhere within those woods. The tiger is definitely a very intimidating creature, especially at night. Then late the author talks about a furnace burning inside the tiger's head, just upsetting the tiger even more, getting him to feel a rage within. His heart began to beat

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from this intensity. It mentions many powerful objects, such as a hammer, a chain, an anvil, and a deadly grasp. All of these you could probably feel when the tiger would pounce on you. I can venture to say, it wouldn't be a very good feeling. These are the most important of lines that I find within this poem. They just do something to help get me going before I head into the weight room.

The second poem that I found inspirational to me was "I will put Chaos into fourteen lines", by Millay. The author tries to describe how to attempt to hold chaos back. Through this poem, she describes chaos as a male type of thing by constantly referring to chaos using he, his, and him. She shows chaos's many features, such as its "adroit designs", amorphous shapes, and it's arrogance. I don't like how the author tries to contain chaos, because really it could never happen. Chaos is something that once released or started, is a very hard thing to get put down or stopped. I know that this is under the title of the poem, that she is putting chaos into the fourteen lines, but I still don't like how it's written. I think the poem should be more uncontrolled, and having the chaos breaking out of the poem in