Matthew+Scuderi

**My Memory Poem:** Last Summer
By: Matthew J Scuderi

**__Within These Walls__**
By: Matthew J. Scuderi

Walking this last road and then to heaven.
__**Ode To Rollerblading**__ By: Matthew J Scuderi
 * My Ode:**

But until then,
It's goodbye and goodnight.

**- My Poetry:**
I find my own poetry sort of unique in the way that I usually write poems that have no rhyme scheme, unlike my sonnet, but I always like to have my poems rhyme. Rhyming brings out a skill that is difficult to master and so when I make or read a poem that has lots of meaning and lots of rhymes, I feel a sense of skill and emotion put into the poem. The rhyming skill amplifies a poems’ meaning through creativity most of the time. In my poems, I choose to rhyme constantly and I find it hard to write free verse because it retrains me from rhyming.

For most of my poems, I focus mostly on sad themes because there are so many words that can be used to show this emotion and for some reason I can come up with clever ways to write them poem so that it makes the reader enjoy what they are reading. Some literary strategies that I like to use in my poems are similes and symbolism. I incorporate these strategies into poems such as my sonnet. In my sonnet, “//Within These Walls,”// I wrote, “Always praying for the light to shine through” and I used this line to show symbolism. The light can represent actual light, realization of something, clarity, help, goodness taking over, and so forth.

The reason why I and so many other poets write poems using symbolism is so the reader can think for him/her self and find their own meaning or interpretation of the phrase(s). My ode was the most difficult of all the poems for me to write because I couldn’t think of something that I really liked enough to fit the poem and it was hard for me to outline how I would show my feelings for the certain thing that I like. I also wanted to rhyme yet again with my ode so that added some challenge as well. What I tried to do was incorporate a freedom theme into my ode so that there would be some meaning to me liking what I was writing about rather than it just being “fun”. I found the theme successful in my poem through the line, “Forgetting all my troubles as the wind glides through my fingers.”

Another poem that I found was a challenge for me was the memory poem. This on was a challenge because I wasn’t allowed to rhyme at all and it was hard to think of a memory I could write about. When I had an idea, my words seemed to come together and so I wrote using many sensory details that would give the reader a sense of what I was feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting. In one of my lines I wrote, “The brightness of the lighting guided my way through a dark hallway…” This was my way of showing the reader what I saw through words. I found it difficult adding scenes when I was using my senses and so this poem, I feel, is not my best.


 * Poems From A Famous Author:**

By: Anna Akhmatova
 * Requiem**

Not under foreign skies Nor under foreign wings protected - I shared all this with my own people There, where misfortune had abandoned us.

Analysis: This poem is about how the author experienced something good (possibly the fall of the soviet union, because she was living in Russia) with the people of her culture. The author writes in the last verse, “ There, where misfortune had abandoned us.” The author states this in order to show that something bad or terrible has left her country. The mood of this poem is hard to determine because of the lack of sensory details, but it does seem a little happy because of the last verse. The mood is more triumphant or victorious.

By: Anna Akhmatova
 * March Elegy**

I have enough treasures from the past to last me longer than I need, or want. You know as well as I. . . malevolent memory won't let go of half of them: a modest church, with its gold cupola slightly askew; a harsh chorus of crows; the whistle of a train; a birch tree haggard in a field as if it had just been sprung from jail; a secret midnight conclave of monumental Bible-oaks; and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting out of somebody's dreams, slowly foundering. Winter has already loitered here, lightly powdering these fields, casting an impenetrable haze that fills the world as far as the horizon. I used to think that after we are gone there's nothing, simply nothing at all. Then who's that wandering by the porch again and calling us by name? Whose face is pressed against the frosted pane? What hand out there is waving like a branch? By way of reply, in that cobwebbed corner a sunstruck tatter dances in the mirror.

By: Anna Akhmatova
 * Solitude**

So many stones have been thrown at me, That I'm not frightened of them anymore, And the pit has become a solid tower, Tall among tall towers. I thank the builders, May care and sadness pass them by. From here I'll see the sunrise earlier, Here the sun's last ray rejoices. And into the windows of my room The northern breezes often fly. And from my hand a dove eats grains of wheat... As for my unfinished page, The Muse's tawny hand, divinely calm And delicate, will finish it.

Analysis: This poem is about the author or the speaker facing many accusations/hardships/criticisms that benefit her. In the poem the author wrote, “ So many stones have been thrown at me, That I'm not frightened of them anymore.” This means that the speaker has gone through so much that hurt them that it doesn’t even bother them anymore or that they have gone through so much that they don’t feel the pain of the hardships anymore. The author then states, “And the pit has become a solid tower… From here I'll see the sunrise earlier.” This shows that the speaker is benefitting from all the hardships that he/she faced. In the rest of the poem the author wrote about how hardships help build up someone or make them stronger because the author writes that the speaker will “see the sunrise earlier”. The author later states, “As for my unfinished page, The Muse's tawny hand, divinely calm. And delicate, will finish it.” The author is comparing her life to a page that is unfinished, but will be complete once she is mused or absorbed in thought. The mood of this poem is also victorious and triumphant as well. There is also no rhyme scheme really, but there is one end rhyme from verses six and ten. This poet doesn’t have many poems that rhyme probably because she did not want her poems to be more creative or entertaining rather than meaningful. This poem was probably written to express feeling for what was going on at the time with the author because she was facing many problems with her husband(s) and custody of her child.


 * Memory Of The Sun:**

By: Anna Akhmatova

Memory of sun seeps from the heart. Grass grows yellower. Faintly if at all the early snowflakes Hover, hover.

Water becoming ice is slowing in The narrow channels. Nothing at all will happen here again, Will ever happen.

Against the sky the willow spreads a fan The silk's torn off. Maybe it's better I did not become Your wife.

Memory of sun seeps from the heart. What is it? -- Dark? Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us In the night.

Analysis: This poem is about winter coming abruptly and shortening the days. The author writes about how the sun goes away in the winter and how it is always dark and miserable because of things dying off such as plants. The poem states, “ Memory of sun seeps from the heart. Grass grows yellower. Faintly if at all the early snowflakes…” This verse is saying that the “memory of the sun” leaves the heart of people and the environment begins to wither or die because of the winter. The author writes about winter coming throughout the poem by stating, “Water becoming ice is slowing in The narrow channels” and “Against the sky the willow spreads a fan The silk's torn off.” These verses show winter’s characteristics and they give the reader something to picture when they read the verses. The mood of this poem is gloomy and sad because it depicts winter as a dreadful thing and the sun as a joyous illumination. The author wrote the poem as a free verse with no rhyme scheme. The author’s style of writing is usually free verse in her poems, which gives the poem a mood or feeling of a story being told rather than a catchy or lyrical poem. From what harships the author was facing in her country at the time along with her son being taken away, maybe this poem was written to show her grief and sadness by writing about a long winter coming and that she wouldn't see the "sun" for a while.