Rather than stating its literal meaning, a metaphor makes the meaning of the entire poem even stronger. 13. Meter This category explores various emotions through the lens of classic and contemporary famous emotions poems. Here you can find poems that touch on the varied emotions we experience in life. 1. Ode to The Heart One of Whitman’s shortest and most celebrated poems,“O Me! O Life!” highlights the daily struggle that is life. After his early lamentations, the poet concludes that the meaning of life lies in life itself — that we are present, alive, and can contribute our own verse to life. In Whitman’s case this is literally a verse, but metaphorically this refers to whatever you bring to the table. 11. "Life Doesn’t Frighten Me", by Maya Angelou Reflecting on the futility of life, Oliver’s “The Summer Day” shakes the reader by the shoulder, offering a jolt of inspiration. As everything dies ‘at last’ and ‘too soon’, the poem encourages us to live our one life intentionally. By asking the reader what you plan to do with ‘your one wild and precious life’, the poem serves as a reminder that it’s ultimately our job to fill our own lives with meaning (whatever that might mean for each one of us!). So, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? 6. "The Guest House", by Rumi

A single sentence broken up into 8 small lines, Anaïs Nin’s “Risk” uses a flower as a metaphor, to remind us that there will come a day when the pain of complacency will exceed the pain of actually daring to make a change. The poem serves as an understated call to action — make the change now, no matter how scary. 2. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", by Robert FrostOf course, language develops into a more abstract system for communication. It can often remain a struggle, however, to give expression to feelings that are powerfully felt in the body, such as loneliness or grief or trauma. As John Hannah’s character says in Four Weddings and a Funeral, when trying to articulate his feelings about his dead partner, “Unfortunately there I run out of words”. Poems are a form of writing that’s often rich with emotion, and they’re meant to provoke an emotional response from the reader.

The nostalgic tone of “Life is a Privilege'' makes one feel blessed to have the opportunity to live. Wilcox artfully describes all of life’s blessings (from the sun’s rays to the chance to chase our dreams). Serving as a bitter-sweet reminder of how short life is, the poem encourages the reader to leave no room for regret, and live out their heart's desires. 25. "Lines on a Skull", by Ravi Shankar Unlike to anaphora, epistrophe is a literary device in which successive sentences or sentence fragments end with the same phrase. Our ears naturally attune to the landing point of any given word grouping, and so writers and speakers can use this tool to draw particular attention to a word or idea. What the teacher said when asked: What er we avin for geography, Miss? by John Agard, In the Land of Giants by George Szirtes, The Taste of a Biscuit by AF Harrold, When Granny by Valerie Bloom, Isn’t My Name Magical? by James Berry, Heights by Aoife Mannix

38. "A Quoi Bon Dire", by Charlotte Mew

Emotions can even change our body temperature in an instant like a switch inside, we can have warm to hot feelings, to a chill with goose bumps from our toes to our eyes. An extremely short poem, D.H Lawrence’s “Full Life” can be entirely quoted in two sentences. While Lawrence may be advocating a nonchalant, unbothered approach to life (as clearly reflected in the poem’s length), the paradoxical nature of the poem’s very existence often leaves readers wondering what the poet really means. 20. "What Is This Life", by Sir Walter Raleigh Seeing the range of word-level tools available to you as a writer can be both exciting and a little overwhelming. As you can see, the twenty-six unassuming little letters of the English language carry within them a world of possibility—the poet just needs to know how to make them dance.