"The Man with Night Sweats" by Thom Gunn

The persona here is dealing with some internal issue. Something that is happening is resulting in night sweats for this person. Night sweats are the reaction to the situation, therefore, a certain level of wisdom can be found in this. The wisdom and poignancy go hand in hand because the sharpest part of the piece is not given explicitly, but it is the fact that he or she is living with this thing. "A world of wonders in each challenge to the skin. i cannot but be sorry the given shield was cracked, my mind reduced to hurry, my flesh reduced and wrecked." The reaction, night sweats, tears, tantrums, and even silence is where the poignancy and wisdom are found. It is also where I and all people should find themselves; the time of solitude in which you are the only one surrounding yourself.

"America" by Allen Ginsberg

This piece is an interesting one. The persona created is exercising free speech to speak wisdom into the ears and eyes of his or her listeners. The topic of America is potent and the apparent point of view of the speaker is shared by many. He or she is questioning America'a success and it is due to a cascade effect of multiple wrong-doings. "America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don't feel good don't bother me. I won't write my poem till I'm in the right mind."

"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

The most poignant part of this poem is the title. We mask ourselves off from the world by changing our masks according do our day to day agenda. We masks ourselves for privacy because our own sense of self-hood relies on this mask. The speaker captures a "universal persona" through her "imaginative power." "We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes- this debt we pay to human guile..."

"Incident" by Countee Cullen

Controversy is Lyric Life. This particular piece speaks of just that. The persona of the speaker of the poem is one of disbelief and scorn. "Now I was eight and very small, and he was no whit bigger, and so I smiled, but he poked out his tongue, and called me, "Nigger." The level of elatededness of the speaker went from positive to negative in an instant. One word provides the whole message of the poem; the wisdom of the poem lies within the experience of the individual, the speaker. The creation of that very word was as a result of an incident.

"I Am" by John Claire

I Am. All that we can be in life and all that we wish to attain and hopefully someday will are products of what we know and who we are. I Am. The speaker is alone in his or her struggle through life; alone in the sense that he or she is really the only way that can relate to whatever is happening. We are alone that way as well. The world is filled with a vast amount of vanity and selfishness and not enough selflessness, and as a result we become the sole "self-consumer of our woes." The world revolves around what it knows regardless of the life cycle.

"Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between Races" by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Cervantes speaks of the truth of racism and prejudice's. There is wisdom and poignancy throughout the poem. The accounting of these political opinions creates the persona of the speaker; could it even be Cervantes herself? "I'am not a revolutionary. I don't even like political poems. Do you think I can believe in a war between races? I can deny it. I can forget about it when I'm safe, living on my own continent of harmony and home, but I'am not there." It is statements like this one, with a high degree of "politicalness", that I find myself in. This world would be a perfect one if the ideas of distinction and opression ceased to exist.

"A Marriage" by Michael Blumenthal

The author of this poem is obviously describing a marriage. He describes it a ceiling that needs to continuously held up by the husband and wife, if not the house will fall. The ceiling represents the shared love of the matrimony and the house describes the marriage itself. If the ceiling falls then the love is no longer shared and the marriage ceases to exist. I can relate to this poem, not because I'm married or have been before, but because I once witnessed the destruction of a house which lead to the dissolution of my parent's marriage. Blumenthal hits the nail on the ehad with this description of a marriage because that is exactly what marriage is about, carrying on when your other cannot.