Beehives (Q1) Poem pg. 8
This little poem was a simple classroom exercise of imagery and emotion. I was trying to describe anger and anxiousness using the metaphor of a beehive. At first this small poem had a lot going. I had brought in honey and concentrating on it, so I just cut it off there and add a couple of lines to tie it all together. I think visually, I was able to represent the emotion I wanted as seen through “In my head./Hexagons lining./All perfectly still/And symmetrical./Thoughts/Perfectly still/And symmetrical.” I am not really sure I would do anything to this piece as it seems nice and simple to me. I think even now, this piece is exemplary of the simple yet powerful writing I am capable of.
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Nightmares (Q2) Prose pg. 9
“Nightmares” wasn’t a story I was planning on writing about, but this specific nightmare had felt so vivid I couldn’t possibly not put it into paper. This piece began as just another entry on an abandoned journal, until I decided to go back to it edit it. Through the feedback I received, I made my piece more assertive and cut-off parts that seemed odd or straight-up didn’t make sense. By assertive I mean that instead of seeming “flip-floppy” with my descriptions using a lot of ‘as if’s’ and sometimes not knowing how to describe certain situations. I particularly think that the descriptions on this piece is one of the strengths—as I had to make these very vivid: “They had artificial rosy-colored cheeks, abnormally long eye lashes, tight smiles and no bodies to match them.” This quote is not particularly the best, but is is strong in the sense that it displays the main image of the story which are the dolls. For my weakness—which is also a point of improvement as I didn’t know really how to fix it—the peers that read my piece, thought that I needed some sort of closure or reflection that gave a little extra to the piece. That has also been identified as one of my weaknesses in my Writing Goals, and have been trying to work on it.
Similarly (Q4) Poem pg. 10
This piece originated from having a free prompt we needed to either come up with or look for. I found this one on the internet which had a number of words and they had to all be used for a narrative—I made a poem. This piece was supposed to be positive and fun and although I tried, ultimately the piece turned out out pretty somber and nostalgic. Objectively, I think the piece lacks grand structure. Nonetheless, the idea of using comparisons seems pretty good. Subjectively, though, I believe the piece reads the tone I was trying to portray at the end—the nostalgia. As mentioned, a strength of the poem is the tone that can easily been read as seen in the quote “But often leave one/Disappointed./Waiting./Wondering if it ever mattered/At all.” Although I had some of my peers read it through and suggest edits and none gave me any substantial piece of revision other than changing a couple of words to make the sentences clearer and flow better, I’d still say an area for improvement would be to probably use better examples of the relations of some objects. For example the root beer and the curry still don’t seem as related as they could be.