The first poem I chose was “Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cullens and was read by a young man named Todd Hellems. I found Todd to be an exceptional reader of this poem. He had comfortable, steady eye contact, and his posture and body language showed that he was a respectful, well-educated man, so overall he had a good physical presence. This surprised me since he was just a 19 year old student. He made excellent use of his voice and articulation, having clearly, and eloquently reading the poem and following the rhythm set by the grammar marks. I found his dramatic appropriateness to be quite good as while he used no hand gestures, his facial expressions, especially with his eyes, delivered the poem very well and showed his understanding of it. While the poem itself was not terribly lengthy, it did possess a good amount of challenging language, especially when making allusions rooted in ancient mythologies. The reader does a fantastic job of sharing why the poem has such significance to him, but unfortunately he did not delve very deeply into the actual meaning of the poem, so his evidence of understanding would have to be average. Overall I loved his performance. I prefer the second time he reads the poem at the end of the clip rather than his first attempt, but the reader did a rather excellent job.

            The second poem I chose from the list was “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell read by Kathleen Rogers. Kathleen was phenomenal in her clip and her reading was my favorite by far. She was so comfortable with looking at the camera and she had this body language about her that was so easy-going yet demanded attention at the same time, giving her an excellent rating in my book. Her voice and articulation were both outstanding. She spoke clearly and held showed such a skillful control of rhythm and volume. While she was sitting down to read the poem, she delivered the poem in such a way that its voice came across clearly. Though no hand gestures and few facial expressions were used, Kathleen moved her head slightly from side to side in a way that went great with the rhythm and allowed the poems voice to show through. The level of complexity was excellent as the poem contained challenging language while having a length that matched its complexity very well. Kathleen did an outstanding job with her evidence of understanding. The meaning of the poem and how she interprets the poem was very well delivered. Kathleen gave a captivating performance. The insight to her personal life and how it related her to the poem and the reading of the poem itself makes me give this performance an outstanding rating. 

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: 
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Response by: Peyton Jones

I chose William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" because it is a classic example of lyric poetry. The language, the feelings it provokes, and the rhyme scheme all show this poem to be a lyric poem.

The language is beautiful in this poem. He is comparing his friend to summer in the opening lines by saying they are both more lovely and temperate than a summer's day. He then says some comments that show the negative side of summer, like the idea that it is too short or that it can be too hot at times as seen in lines 4-5. But as the poem goes on and ends, Shakespeare turns the beauty of his loved one into this very poem so that it is immortalized as long as it can still be read, and thereby saying that even though summer ends, his the beauty of his loved one will last forever.

This poem is seen as lyrical because it provokes some strong emotions and thoughts from the reader, such as love and the idea of immortality. The reader's interest is captured by the way Shakespeare compliments his love by comparing them to summer, and then he makes negative comments towards summer. The interest is still captured then by Shakespeare saying, and I'm paraphrasing, "Well since summer has is downfalls and you are so beautiful and perfect, I'm going to make your beauty last forever by making it into this poem." The idea of being able to make someone or even someone's attributes last for eternity by simply putting them into words on paper is capable of provoking very strong emotions in readers, and this poem has done just that over decades.

In the article under Lyric Poems, it is stated that lyrical poetry is lyrical because it uses "memorable language-made memorable by its rhythmical shaping and phonological patterning." Sonnet 18 does just that. It would be easy to put this poem to music and turn it into lyrics because it has beautiful language, for one, but it also follows a simple, easy-to-follow rhyming pattern that rhymes every other line in an A-B-A-B pattern.