I’d say: 
I had a hard time deciding whether to write an essay about the works of “Eudora Welty, Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks” because the rest of the punctuations doesn’t make sense. 
But actually it should be:
I had a hard time deciding whether to write an essay about the works of Eudora Welty, Joan Didion, and Gwendolyn Brooks. 
(Without the quotation marks and inclusion the word “and” before “Gwendolyn”)
        
             
        
        
        
Answer:
time to clam down
Explanation:
because your brain shouldnt need to tell you to focus when your nervous
 
        
             
        
        
        
The initial results seemed promising, but the final effects were kind of disappointing.
In the given sentence above, the unnecessary qualifier that needs to be removed is "kind of". It is an informal expression which is usually used as meaningless fillers. So, the final sentence will be:
The initial results seemed promising, but the final effects were disappointing. 
        
                    
             
        
        
        
Answer:
The speaker asks the wind to “make me thy lyre,” to be his own Spirit, and to drive his thoughts across the universe, “like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth.” He asks the wind, by the incantation of this verse, to scatter his words among mankind, to be the “trumpet of a prophecy.”