The Road Not Taken, By: Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

9. By: E. E. Cummings

there are so many tictoc 

clocks everywhere telling people 

what toctic time it is for 

tictic instance five toc minutes toc 

past six tic  

Spring is not regulated and does 

not get out of order nor do 

its hands a little jerking move 

over numbers slowly     

we do not 

wind it up it has no weights 

springs wheels inside of 

its slender self no indeed dear 

nothing of the kind.  

(So,when kiss Spring comes 

we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss 

lips because tic clocks toc don't make 

a toctic difference 

to kisskiss you and to  

kiss me)

Reaction: Having already read a poem by this brilliant author, I wasn't as confused as I might have been. I was slightly surprised however, at how simple the poem was after a second glance

Meaning: The title "9" refers to the 9 'tics/tocs' and 'kisses' that go on during the poem. Cummings suggests that the clocks that are continuously telling people what time it is, that they are late or early, or if they are running out of time or have plenty of time to spare. He feels like he should be aloud freedom; the clocks do not seem to give him that. In the summer, however, the clocks don't matter because it is a season for (mostly) careless fun. He could really care less about the clocks and their tictoc ways then.

Technique: Free Verse

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r, By: E. E. Cummings

Reaction: I was really confused at first. I was all like "What the heck's this supposed to mean?" But I was intrigued by the uniqueness and strangeness of it, so I tried to figure it out.

Meaning: After rearranging the letters, I think it came out to be "Grasshopper, who as we look now up-gathering into a grasshopper leaps! Arriving to become rearrangingly a grasshopper." This poem that Cummings wrote illustrates the movements of the grasshopper itself, leaping wildly from place to place, as did the letters and words in the poem. It shows the spontaneity of the grasshopper, leaping into then landing back on the ground again. What was also interesting was how Cummings wrote the word 'grasshopper'. He scrambled the letters every time he wrote the word, excepting the last time.

Technique: Cummings used some free verse, along with capitalization, spelling, spacing, and grammatical techniques in order to make his poem even better.