Poetry Project
My Final Art piece to go along with my poem.
My Final Draft of my poem.
Growth as a Poet
My poem has grown from this simple concept of an ode that turns into a confession, to this elaborate structured poem that communicates the importance of war and how she feels about herself. In my first draft of my poem, I had this idea of making people battle each other and how it was kind of like the gladiators “Many will not survive in my games/ That I put on for my entertainment/ In a big arena much like the Coliseum.” This part of my poem I took out completely, because I didn’t think that this was relevant to my poem and in its place I put this stanza “I create the motivation for even a saint to kill./Not everyone can be safe, even with your virtues./I do not corrupt the innocent./You already corrupted yourself with your thoughts,/I simply shed light onto your deepest desires, /letting it be known that you are the enemy.” My first draft is a smorgasbord of different ideas that are put into it to make it seem complex, when in my final draft there is a nice flow of words that all tie into each other that are elaborated to connect with my poem as a whole. “There is nothing to tear me down from my throne/Made of the bodies of war criminals” this from my first draft of my poem and in my final poem I really elaborated but kept it simple “Made with the decaying bodies of war criminals,/there is nothing to tear me down from my bijou and bone encrusted throne./Among others, your body is warped into the monster you were./I enjoy the echo of your last words that ring around me,/the blare of bones cracking under my weight brings joy to the justice I have brought.”
My first most important thing that I had to change in my poem was my opening stanza. “I solve the problems of leaders,/I bestow recognition of glory on people that are perished,/And write their names on the wall with those before them./I painstakingly hand write each name in gold paint/To symbolize they were worth something.” This stanza is very messy and unclean, and had no intention of giving a clear message as of to what was going on and what I wanted my reader to think like in my final drafts first stanza, I really cleaned it up and I turned it into something beautiful, “I bestow glory on people that are perished/and place your name on the wall with those before you./I painstakingly hand write each name in gold paint/to exemplify that you were worth something.” This change makes the reader pay attention because I intended to put in ‘you’ a lot so it is like the poem is speaking to the reader.
My second improvement to my poem was to change this stanza “People may disagree with me /And protest with their flimsy signs, and harmless written words,/Marching in circles, like fish in a fishbowl/It’s pointless for them to rebel.” To this, ” You can challenge my authority,/protest with your flimsy signs, with your harmless written words, /with your sloppy bubble letters, in your bland patriotic colors./You clamor:/“No More War! No More War!”/treading in circles, following the feet before you. It is endless./Pointless.” I felt that if I were to give the reader better visuals and more elaborated specific ‘landmarks’ that everyone knows of. I give the reader familiar things to connect with in the poem so that they do not get confused and lost so that they stop reading, and move on to other things other than my poem. I also tried to put the reader in the shoes of a protester being devalued by this god like entity that makes it seem that war rallies are unnecessary.
The third part of my poem that I knew that I had to build on was this stanza, “So much you hang up billboards of how glorifying I am/ And I am always in the background, watching.” I felt that if I could make the reader know that War cares about them enough to watch them then there should be ways to make sure that they can be easily identified. So I then added a lot of imagery and played with words and came up with this new and improved stanza, “I am your altruistic autocrat;/you hang up billboards of how glorious I am/and I am always in the background, watching./The pictures of me are not shown directly;/I am in the uniforms you adorn./The color patterns on your clothes may seem at random,/I put them there to uniquely distinguish you from others,/like a dog being micro-chipped./And the badges that are awarded
were molded and designed to show my gratitude for serving me.” I felt that if I could more of a personal connection of my character to the reader that it would make them enjoy reading my poem even more. I also thought since I put that connection in this stanza that I would emotionally connect to the reader because some people have friends and family in the military, so this stanza may have had an impact on the reader.
My first most important thing that I had to change in my poem was my opening stanza. “I solve the problems of leaders,/I bestow recognition of glory on people that are perished,/And write their names on the wall with those before them./I painstakingly hand write each name in gold paint/To symbolize they were worth something.” This stanza is very messy and unclean, and had no intention of giving a clear message as of to what was going on and what I wanted my reader to think like in my final drafts first stanza, I really cleaned it up and I turned it into something beautiful, “I bestow glory on people that are perished/and place your name on the wall with those before you./I painstakingly hand write each name in gold paint/to exemplify that you were worth something.” This change makes the reader pay attention because I intended to put in ‘you’ a lot so it is like the poem is speaking to the reader.
My second improvement to my poem was to change this stanza “People may disagree with me /And protest with their flimsy signs, and harmless written words,/Marching in circles, like fish in a fishbowl/It’s pointless for them to rebel.” To this, ” You can challenge my authority,/protest with your flimsy signs, with your harmless written words, /with your sloppy bubble letters, in your bland patriotic colors./You clamor:/“No More War! No More War!”/treading in circles, following the feet before you. It is endless./Pointless.” I felt that if I were to give the reader better visuals and more elaborated specific ‘landmarks’ that everyone knows of. I give the reader familiar things to connect with in the poem so that they do not get confused and lost so that they stop reading, and move on to other things other than my poem. I also tried to put the reader in the shoes of a protester being devalued by this god like entity that makes it seem that war rallies are unnecessary.
The third part of my poem that I knew that I had to build on was this stanza, “So much you hang up billboards of how glorifying I am/ And I am always in the background, watching.” I felt that if I could make the reader know that War cares about them enough to watch them then there should be ways to make sure that they can be easily identified. So I then added a lot of imagery and played with words and came up with this new and improved stanza, “I am your altruistic autocrat;/you hang up billboards of how glorious I am/and I am always in the background, watching./The pictures of me are not shown directly;/I am in the uniforms you adorn./The color patterns on your clothes may seem at random,/I put them there to uniquely distinguish you from others,/like a dog being micro-chipped./And the badges that are awarded
were molded and designed to show my gratitude for serving me.” I felt that if I could more of a personal connection of my character to the reader that it would make them enjoy reading my poem even more. I also thought since I put that connection in this stanza that I would emotionally connect to the reader because some people have friends and family in the military, so this stanza may have had an impact on the reader.
Here are the links to my other Projects: