Poetry Interpretation: "Where the Sidewalk Ends"

1) Dramatic Situation: 
Most likely a male speaker referring to a utopia of what the world should/could look like. Most likely old and wise, possibly telling this to someone much younger than himself.


2) Structure:

The title of the poem is repeated in the first and last lines.  Punctuation marks separate each complete thought.  The author gets from one idea to another through the use of imagery, changing scenes with each stanza. 


3) Theme:The theme most likely is that this world is not everything it can be. That we can improve and expand this world to something better and more efficient.


4) Grammar and Meaning:The author's grammar is well managed and technical. He uses phrases that better express his idea of the utopia, such as "Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black."


5) Images and Figures of Speech:The whole poem itself is full of imagery and lush descriptions. This is very key in the telling of this poem because it hits home again with the point that the author is trying to make.


6) Important Words:Words and phrases such as "crimson bright" and "cool in the peppermint wind" contribute to this sense of imagery. 


7) Tone:The tone of this piece is optimistic and carefree.


8) Literary Devices:Imagery, imagery, imagery. Such as:

"And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight"

9) Prosody: The flow of the poem is smooth and very enjoyable to read. It makes for the message to come across, much more clearly.

AP Practice Test: Reflection

The tedious task of practice writing to AP Essay prompts brought me back to last year in English 3 where all we did was practice, practice, practice. The particular prompts we had today were fairly easy however. The prompts themselves were fairly intriguing, however I found myself easily able to write to them. The only difficult part I encountered was the time limit for each essay. So many thoughts came rushing through my head, and it was hard to sribble them all down before the next one.

Almost exactly similar to past AP prompts that I have encountered, the AP questions were required a fairly decent amount of time to think about them. One can not simply answer them with a quick yes or no, and a one sentence explanation. I found myself getting more and more frustrated with the time allotted. I wanted to make them as perfect as possible, but with the time it was near impossible. So in short for the actual exam, I feel it would be better toi write all of the thoughts on to scratch then, synthesis them into a few paragraphs.