"Boats and Birds" by Gregory and the Hawk

If you be my star
I'll be your sky
you can hide underneath me and come out at night
when I turn jet black and you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine

but you can skyrocket away from me
and never come back if you find another galaxy
far from here with more room to fly
just leave me your stardust to remember you by

if you be my boat
I'll be your sea
a depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity
ebbing and flowing and pushed by a breeze
I live to make you free
I live to make you free

but you can set sail to the west if you want to
and past the horizon till I can't even see you
far from here where the beaches are wide
just leave me your wake to remember you by

if you be my star
I'll be your sky
you can hide underneath me and come out at night
when I turn jet black and you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine

but you can skyrocket away from me
and never come back if you find another galaxy
far from here with more room to fly
just leave me your stardust to remember you by
stardust to remember you by...


Which literary device most accurately describes the meaning of the song?
A) Imagery
B) Metaphor
C) Repetition
D) Diction
E) Mood


“Boats and Birds” by Gregory and the Hawk:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz5H3iVjAlw

Breathe by Taylor Swift

I see your face in my mind as I drive away
'Cause none of us thought it was gonna end that way
People are people and sometimes we change our minds
But it's killing me to see you go after all this time

Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm
Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm

Music starts playin' like the end of a sad movie
It's the kinda ending you don't really wanna see
'Cause it's tragedy and it'll only bring you down
Now I don't know what to be without you around

And we know it's never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me
You're the only thing I know like the back of my hand

And I can't breathe
Without you, but I have to
Breathe
Without you, but I have to

Never wanted this, never want to see you hurt
Every little bump in the road I tried to swerve
People are people and sometimes it doesn't work out
Nothing we say is gonna save us from the fall out

And we know it's never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me
You're the only thing I know like the back of my hand

And I can't breathe
Without you, but I have to
Breathe
Without you, but I have to

It's two a.m., feelin' like I just lost a friend
Hope you know it's not easy, easy for me
It's two a.m., feelin' like I just lost a friend
Hope you know this ain't easy, easy for me

And we know it's never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me, oh

I can't breathe
Without you, but I have to
Breathe
Without you, but I have to
Breathe
Without you, but I have to

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry




The tone of this passage is:

A. Hopeful
B. Sorrowful
C. Cheerful
D. Venomous
E. Nervous

On the Run - 1997

I grew up on the run.
I guess that you can say
I am my father's son.
I’m haunted every day
by the choices I have made,
and that's something
I couldn't say to just anyone.

I spent my best years on the road.
done my share of rambling,
think I’ll head back to my home.
But no where ever seems
like it's the only place for me.
so as much as I don't want to be alone,
I gotta leave.

sometimes you gotta hurt
to feel okay.
sometimes you gotta run
to make your problems go away.
no one ever taught me
what I really need to know.
like how to love some one,
and let em' go...

let em' go, let em' go
how can you really love someone,
and let em' go?

The tone of this passage can be described as…
A. Poignant
B. Cheerful
C. Impassive
D. Spiritual
E. Symbolic

Some Days- Billy Collins

Some Days

by Billy Collins

Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs, 
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next 
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds, 
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

What literary device best expresses the speaker's view on life?

a) descriptive imagery

b) cheery diction

c) hyperbole

d) extended metaphor

e) angry tone

sweet video!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaBeaQHdrGo

Cassino- Platano

I've got these hands and Ive got some oxygen...
I just don't know what to do with it.
Brandy tricks and treats the knees and I fell for it
Somehow they say this doll will sway and swing
between the universe and me
We'll spend our days fast and grey
Trying not to drink the sea.
We're so stout and double faced
Becoming prophets everyday with a gospel
Of how we grooved and all the breath that it removed

The rebellion is over
The colors are much bolder
And the emperor's new clothes sag...

I'll try my best, I'll make it fit
But the more it grinds the worse it gets
I watch it shake my hold of it
The more it runs the more tired I get...

Take all of space, the earth and how it tastes
I never loved it anyways
We fought the rain with the heaviest chains
Hoping to drown or float away
Everything you could have been
Has been rebuilt with gauze and tin
What I want is just to get on,
Never get off, never move on

And I don't have a single cell to pawn
To the tricks the devil trips us on
We arm this room and get left in empty tombs
As the invisible break through
Screaming I know how to make this easier
I can make it easier
I can make it

The line "What I want is just to get on, never get off, never move on" is an example of:
a) Aphorism
b) Asyndeton
c) Chiasmus
d) Polysyndeton
e) Assonance

Woe, Say Anything

All the words in my mouth
that the scene deemed unworthy of letting out
banded together to form a makeshift militia
and burrowed bloodily through my tongue and my teeth.
I stood proud in the gallery
With my open socket of a mouth for them to see.
They all just laughed and said
"That boy, he, that boy's got woe. Woe.
He lives with woe. Woe."

And this girl who I met
Whose pride makes her hard to forget,
She took pity on me horizontally
But most likely because of my band.(hey)

It's all I can get when I'm lonely
And these visions of death seem to own me
In the quiet of the classrooms
All across the stacked United States of Woe. Woe.
We live with woe.

She said "I can't get laid in this town
Without these pointy fucking shoes.
My feet are so black and blue and so are you."
Please take me out of my body
Up through the palm trees
To smell California in sweet hypocrisy.
Floating my senses surround my body.
I wake my nose to smell that ocean burn.

So now I'm forging ahead
Past all the plutocrats who sold me out.
Go sob in your bed.
If life is twice as pretty once your dead
Then send me a card.
I'm still the optimist though it is hard
When all you want to be
Is in a dream.
(A dream)


The Phrases "To smell California in sweet hypocrisy" and "I wake my nose to smell that ocean burn" are examples of...
a) Chiasmis
b) Extended Metaphor
c) Motif
d) Synesthesia
e) Surrealism

Sixteen Military Wives by the Decemberists

Sixteen military wives
Thirty-two softly focused, brightly colored eyes
Staring at the natural tan
Of thirty-two gently clenching wrinkled little hands.

Seventeen company men
Out of which only twelve will make it back again.
Sergeant sends a letter to five
Military wives whose tears drip down through ten little eyes.

Cheer them on to their rivals!
Cause America can, and America can't say no
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so!

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da

Fifteen celebrity minds
Leading their fifteen sordid wretched checkered lives.
Will they find the solution in time
Using their fifteen pristine moderate liberal minds?

Eighteen academy chairs
Out of which only seven really even care
Doling out the garland to five
Celebrity minds, they're humbly taken by surprise.

Cheer them on to their rivals!
Cause America can, and America can't say no.
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so!

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da

Fourteen cannibal kings
Wondering blithely what the dinner bell will bring,
Fifteen celebrity minds
Served on a leafy bed of sixteen military wives.

Cheer them on to their rivals!
Cause America can, and America can't say no.
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so!

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da-dedadeda-de de dadede-daaaaa

The speaker's attitude toward America is most conveyed through the use of
A. Repetition
B. Anaphora
C. Rhyme
D. Assonance
E. Rhetorical questions

Veins, by Charlotte Martin

I know you know
Let the life come back and force through my veins
It goes, it goes
Through the protons, neutrons securing the frame
Say yes say no
It's a matter of me forcing the praise
Put on the new
Woman, man, and child who are breaking the braces

The catacombs
And revolving doors inside of my brain
Preachers and whores
And the neon pulpits burst into flames
I come from both
Sides of me and either side of their tracks
Humbling my ghosts
Letting life that floods my veins bring me back

The unshackling of the chains on my wrists
And the loyalty to pain that resists
And the greatest books are talking about this
Why must everybody die to exist?

Hello my love
Seeking passages and food for your soul
On 95
Look ahead cause they're not filling that hole yet
Come lay your hands
Over mine and it will make us both brave
Braver to know
Let the light, the life force back in our veins

The unshackling of the chains on my wrists
And the loyalty to pain that resists
And the greatest books are talking about this
Why must everybody die to exist?

Are you ready for the power of god?
Are you waiting for the saints to all nod?
At the girl who should be raised from the dead?
At the demons who've been forced from my head?

Hey
Oh hallelujah
Oh hallelujah
Oh hallelujah I've come undone
Oh hallelujah
Oh hallelujah
Oh hallelujah I've come undone

The unshackling of the chains on my wrists
The loyalty to pain that resists
And the greatest books are talking about this
Why must everybody die to exist?

Are you ready for the power of god?
Are you waiting for the saints to all nod?
At the girl who should be raised from the dead?

The main subject in the passage is. . .

A. The speaker's constant aggravating thoughts.

B. The speaker's conflict between body and mind.

C. The speaker's love for religious figures.

D. The speaker's frustration with the standards society has unintentionally created.

E. The speaker's desire to be her own person, and not one that is generic. 

This song doesn't have a music video, but the link has the lyrics going along with the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5Ww5fA16qU

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

1. The tone of the poem may be described as . . .
A) joyful
B) hopeless

C) mystical
D) picturesque
E) sad

Poem Example: Gwendolyn Brooks - "We Real Cool"

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

The structure of this poem is characterized
A. by enjambment
B. as free verse
C. as a sonnet
D. by caesura
E. by anaphora

You don't need this, but it's a nice touch.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433

Song Example: Ani DiFranco - "Grey"

The sky is grey, the sand is grey, and the ocean is grey.
I feel right at home in this stunning monochrome, alone in my way.
I smoke and I drink and every time I blink I have a tiny dream.
But as bad as I am I'm proud of the fact that I'm worse than I seem.
What kind of paradise am I looking for?
I've got everything I want and still I want more.
Maybe some tiny shiny thing will wash up on the shore.
You walk through my walls like a ghost on TV
You penetrate me and my little pink heart is on its little brown raft floating out to sea.
And what can I say but I'm wired this way and you're wired to me
And what can I do but wallow in you unintentionally?
What kind of paradise am I looking for?
I've got everything I want and still I want more.
Maybe some tiny shiny key will wash up on the shore.
Regretfully, I guess I've got three simple things to say.
Why me? Why this now? Why this way?
Overtone's ringing, undertow's pulling away under a sky that is grey on sand
That is grey by an ocean that's grey.
What kind of paradise am I looking for?
I've got everything I want and still I want more.
Maybe some tiny shiny key will wash up on the shore.

The speaker's conflict is most effectively conveyed through
A. the image of the color grey
B. the use of polysyndeton
C. the use of rhetorical questions
D. the use of paradoxes
E. the repetition of the phrase "tiny shiny"

You don't need to include this, but it would be a nice touch.