MGRP: Poem Compilation

Directions: Find three poems or songs that have a common theme that link to your topic
through a common theme. Analyze each poem or song for literary techniques and meaning.
This can be through a paragraph or through detailed annotation. Finally write a paragraph
connecting each poem or song to each other and to your topic through a common theme.
Specific reference must be made to each poem or song.

Poem/Song #1

Song Title Chicago

Poet/Songwriter Ryan Hodges

The city is a grid

of lights projected
by man-made mountains
built of glass and steel;
they reflect, distorted
off the glass surface
of Lake Michigan.

Good morning

The sun rises

with heavy-eyed commuters,
homes filling with
the smell of coffee;
yesterdays events are
brought inside, rolled
up in a blue plastic bag.

Soon the traffic on the Dan Ryan

will turn the stretch of road
into a temporary parking lot.

Life enters the veins

of downtown;
it heads down Michigan Avenue
to the heart of The Loop.

The ferris wheel at Navy Pier

begins to turn hypnotically,
attracting all walks of life.

A Muslim passes a Christian

on the street;
they smile at each other;
their backgrounds dont matter.

Someone is calling;
someone is answering.
Today is the best day for one,
the worst day for another.

The day does its job to go on

Chicago fills its lungs,

then exhales life back home.
The sun colors buildings,
traces of day
to be soon replaced
by the form of lit office windows.

From a plane passing over,

the grid is a chessboard
waiting for the next day,
the next game.

Hughes uses imagery to describe the city and support the readers
Literary Techniques understanding.
and Analysis The Author also uses multiple metaphors in which he compares the
city streets to the human veins, and the liveliness of the city to a breath
from a pair of lungs.
The rising sun is used by the writer to symbolize the beginning of a
new cycle.

Poem/Song #2

Song Title A Brook in The City

Poet/Songwriter Robert Frost

The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square

With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run --
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.

The first literary technique the writer uses is personification in the first
Literary Techniques line. The Farmhouse Lingers
and Analysis The author also uses Rhyme throughout the entirety of the poem.
One metaphor Frost uses is The Brook was thrown deep in a sewer
dungeon. Comparing the way the brook disappeared to being tossed
away meaninglessly.

Poem/Song #3

Song Title This City

Poet/Songwriter Liam Rector

This apartment with no furniture,

where no one puts anything up,
where everyone schemes to get out.

This mess, to the right and the left of me,

that equation of garbage wherein matter moves its way,
the magazine sector in glanced-at demise.

This price, and that mind, and nothing to say but violent.
Nothing but violence in the expensive mind.
Moving from the window towards morning.

These characters at the bottom, so generous

and pathetic. Those abstract things at the top,
so mean, precise and arresting.

That god-abandoned theatre with its three-legged dog.

Staying alone to learn the lesson, the lesson being
DO NOT SPEND NIGHTS ALONE FOR AWHILE.

This program, these organizations, these gatherings

and awards. This sweat that drags it down.
These pagans with large teeth and good eyes.

The profit sector giving us images, the nonprofit

passing out handbills, and worried.
The mind that grabs after information.

The dance changed every week so no one masters

any one dance. Carrying around the little guns
and knives, the bars owned by a friend.

The same economy that binds them together

pulls them apart. The little thems, staring
into the canyon. The all of us.

A sense of proportion, in this dense heat,

hearing the tune of romance behind the psychotic.
The profit sector giving us images.
Elegance, learning, poverty and crime.
Those who smell power must dog these.
The untuning of cement into many moods.

In audacity, in hilarity, this city

plays an unbelievable organ.
How afternoon goes like the movies

Liam uses imagery in continuously describing the city and its

Literary Techniques surroundings to the reader.
and Analysis He also uses personification saying The same economy that binds
them together, pulls them apart. And giving the economy the
humanistic quality to exact action on its inhabitants.
Liam uses denotation when he describes the city using words such as
garbage, violence, guns, knifes, and bars

Write a paragraph discussing how the poems/songs connect to your topic and each other. You
must make specific reference to each of the poems/songs.

The three poems are connected as they all describe the city environment, the buildings, and the
feelings of the inhabitants. Van Der Rohe was ultimately concerned about the very same issues
faced by these poems, as an architect his job was to influence urban life in a positive manner
through efficient and artful design. Van Der Rohe contributed to the development of such cities
and the ever-shifting form city life takes on. These three poets are the people Mies would have
to work to benefit.