Big Yellow Taxi and Field Below

Author's Note: This is a piece reaction and response to the two poems and songs, “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Field Below”.

            What are these two poems about? 

            First, “Big Yellow Taxi” is talking about a girl who is watching nature being destroyed right in front of her eyes. She is not happy about her beautiful world being destroyed by the people. The purpose of this poem is to express her feeling and concern about what they are doing to her society. The tone that you get from this poem is sadness. The author’s mood in this poem is sympathetic. The song that is made from this poem is nothing like the poem. The poem’s tone and mood is sadness and depression and the song’s tone and mood is happiness. This means that the song was meant to be played in a different atmosphere than the poem. I believe that that is very bad because if you copy the poem it would be a good idea to keep the tone and mood the same.

           The second poem, “Field Below” is similar to the poem, “Big Yellow Taxi” because it also is talking about nature. The meaning of this poem is to explain to the audience that she wishes she had a beautiful field to look out to everyday. The purpose of writing this poem is to show that she wishes that she had a field like she did when she was growing up, but now she is stuck in a big crowded town with no field. The tone and mood are the same as “Big Yellow Taxi”, sadness and sympathetic. The mood and tone of the song relate perfectly with the poem. The poem is meant to be sad and that is exactly how the song is sung. This show s that the person singing the song understood and felt the pain of the poem writer and sang the song how the poem writer would have. I believe that, that was a good thing to do because I think that if people read the poem and heard the song would understand it better.

Leslie's Death

I let you die

Trying to go

To Terabithia

All alone

I am sorry

I should have

Warned you

The water was high

But you wouldn’t

Listen to me anyway

So why

Should I have tried

This is a parody to the poem “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos William. This is a poem about when Leslie died trying to go to Terabithia. The speaker in this poem is Jess. The audience that this poem is to is Leslie. The tone starts off sad and sorry and turns into sarcasm. The mood of the story is that he is not sorry for her death and is happy he doesn’t have to deal with her anymore.

Mother to Son

Authors Note: This is a response to the poem "Mother to Son".          

The metaphor in the poem “Mother to Son”, by Langston Hughes, is when he says, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” It is used so that you understand that his life hasn’t been expensive and easy. He had to work for things. Also the personification, “I’se a-climbing on,” means that she never gave up and is still trying to get to the top. The tone that I get from this story is that a person passing down a helpful tip to someone because he is trying to tell that person to never give up. The mood that I think the author had in this was serous because I believe the author is truly trying to help the person.

Describing Cole

Author's Notes: This is a figurative language piece describing how Cole and how he acts in the book Touching Spirit Bear.

Have you ever been changed in a big way by something you never wanted to do? Cole is a victim of this. He used to be a hard-nosed bully who beat the living daylights out of people. He was changed into a loving caring person who helps people for the good feeling of being wanted. He found out that people care about him and that his beats him up because he didn’t know better. He is just now learning about the meaning of his existence on this Earth.

Cole is learning that everybody has a place on Earth and that everything is precious. He still is a persistent person and will never go back to his past. He has learned a lot from being banished to an island for beating up Peter. He is truly turning his life around. The most important lesson learned from this is that he now knows what he has done in his past was very bad, but that is his past. He can’t correct his past, but he can learn and better improve his future for his life to come.