Children are often curious about everyday life. They want to know, what’s next? Are we there yet? What will that button do if I touch it? what’ s on the other side? As parents we will try to protect our children from things we think may harm them or from people we feel aren’t the best company for them to keep. In poem “A song in the front yard” written by Gwendolyn Brooks, gets her point across that life’s not always better on the other side.

In the beginning of the poem “A song in the front yard” Brooks writes “I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back”. I assume the front yard symbolizes consistency, structure, as well as orderliness. In line four Brooks writes “ A girl gets sick or a rose”. The girl appears to be bored with her everyday lifestyle in the front yard.

In the middle of the poem the girl decides she is ready for her journey to the back yard. To her the back yard is a place of freedom and individualism. In the back yard she would be accompanied by other children who are different and live different lifestyle then her. A place where she determines she will have a good time and explore new things.

At the end of the poem her mother tells her one of the girls would grow up and be a bad woman and describes how much trouble the children would get her in. But the girl seems to not care to listen to her mother and continued to think what life would be like to play in the back yard .

It was a delight reading these short poems. Poetry for me has been a way of expressing feelings, I don’t have to be the writer I could just read and relate. Poetry gets to the heart of the point so quickly, you instantly can gleam what the poet is saying. It is emotionally touching because of the sharpness in which each single word means so much.

I picked this poem because it relates to some things I went through, it represents me in many ways. My parents came from two different back ground, religions and cultures. As a adolescent raised by my mother I learn to love the Christian way. As I became a teenager (in my rebellious years) I wanted to explore outside of my religion and learn more about others. People had their opinions but that did not stop my actions. So I would do my research and go