Overview on Poetry

The titles in my poem could definitely use a lot of work. As opposed to finding creative titles that add to the poem, which I found hard, the titles became a last minute thing that I sort of jotted down.

I think I did my form quite well. My haikus have the right syllable count and my other poems have line breaks that, in my opinion, make sense and flow nicely. I think form is one of my strongest points in my poems.

I believe one of the other strongest points in my poetry is use of poetry devices, specifically alliteration and sound of the word. I also use repetition to emphasize.

I think my poems were only moderate in their impact. I used line breaks and other poetry devices effectively enough to create impact, but the content of the poems were not as impactful as they could have been, which I probably could have fixed in more time.

I definitely considered diction above all else when I was writing poems. I tried to use cacophonic words to describe things badly and euphonic words to contrast and describe something nice. Some of my metaphors and similes could use some work, but generally I did fairly well at using words and being consistent with my diction within the poems.

My spelling and grammar I believe I did well, although I recall I got a bit confused with punctuation, due to the fact it’s much different than writing prose. Still, I think I used punctuation moderately well to help with the impact of sentences.

I believe all my poems were an appropriate length, at a page each save for my haikus. They were short enough to keep the reader interested while being long enough to contain a story and many poetry devices.

Because of these things I would give myself a 3+ for my poetry collection.

Patchwork poem

I have been acquainted with the night,

The Angel of Death at his kill.

I can’t remember childhood.

Murder is losing its mind, I am losing my patience,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.

The Snobby Princess (character poem)

Once upon a time,

In a castle far away,

There lived a lovely prince,

Whom I gazed at day to day.

He searched and searched and searched,

Though I was always there.

Why did he never notice me?

Why did he never care?

And one day a princess came,

And she was full of dirt,

And yet no matter how she smelled,

She had something up her skirt.

The queen placed me to suffocate,

Under the mattresses soft.

The princess tossed and turned all night,

And in the morning scoffed.

She blamed me for her painful dreams,

She turned the prince against me.

Her parents locked me away.

I am just a helpless pea.

And one day from in my cell,

I heard the ringing bell.

My lovely prince had married her,

The snob princess from hell.

Why I Didn't get my Homework Done Last Night (a sonnet)

When I go online and see gifs of cats,
I feel a happiness within my heart,
They laugh and play and wear their tiny hats,
And it is tearing my whole life apart.

My whole family teases me when they see,
The balls of yarn and fur mixed up in one.
They don’t understand what it does to me.
I’ve gone so far that I can’t see the sun.

The cat overlord whispers in my mind,
Of things that no human can understand.
I must resist this contract I have signed.
The cats now own my soul, and I am damned.

For every waking hour now I must face,
The cats of Facebook, Tumblr, and Myspace.

Short Story Reviews

The character that stood out in the stories we read, for me, would have to be, Tess, who got stoned in “The Lottery.” This is because her personality shifted so greatly in a split second and she truly showed what humankind can act like. She never protested to the lottery itself, but that the way they performed it that particular time was unfair. She was at first, joking around and seemed all for the lottery. She gave no indication of not wanting the lottery, even when her name was chosen and she was being stoned, she merely protested to the fact her name specifically was pulled. She represents humankind’s sheep-like nature and the way she’s portrayed casts a creepy depiction of what humans are.The aspect I found most difficult of story writing was both time constraints and thinking of a middle section. It’s easy to think of a scenario, a conflict, and even a resolution. It’s easy to think up characters and character traits. But finding out how the characters get to the resolution in a short time frame, both for me as the writer, and for the characters, as there was a page restriction of three pages maximum, is difficult. I found, also, that the fact I had less time to think about the story, and my characters, the less time I had to set up a solid back story for each of them. I had a vague story for them both and this made dialogue harder, because without their background it’s hard to understand how they would talk. Also, it was hard, because of time and the relevancy to the actual plot of the story, to describe the backstories of the characters in my actual story without going too off-topic. I think this made the story’s dialogue seem a bit out of place for the reader as well.

I enjoy short stories with some sort of action or suspense to them. I enjoy any sort of drama in a short story, so long as it’s not relationship drama. I don’t like stories that focus on romance or family drama, I would much prefer a story about coping with death or something much more serious than relationship issues. I enjoy plot twists in my stories the most, though. A sudden jarring plot twist that has me re-reading the same line over and over to try and comprehend what exactly just side-swiped me is the best feeling. I think this is perhaps why I loved “The Fall of the house of Usher” so much. It had a very sudden realisation that left me gawking at the book for many minutes, literally.

What I like about my short story is the plot and the mood the setting creates. I like my characters as well, but they’re portrayal could use work, as well as dialogue, definitely. My setting, though, in my mind, works well with the situation and helps to show how depressed Faith is and perhaps her hatred to the world. It shows that she gave up on everything and secluded herself from everything and everyone and sort of gave up. I liked my characters, but they could use a bit of work. I found it hard writing for Finn because he doesn’t fit the stereotype of young boy. He’s been living on the street and has picked up things from the gang he is in. He had to take care of his mother when she was alive, and so he has a sense of responsibility that other kids his age really don’t.  This made him a sort of hard character to wrap my mind around at times. How he would react to certain things was not how a normal eight-year-old would, and so I possibly made it difficult for myself.

Continued Hiaku (Renga)

Atlantic Spirits

Hard granite slab field;

The ghosts of my ancestors

drift on top the sea

They call out to me sadly

A language I wish I knew.

A past forgotten

Begins to tell its story

And of its demise