Araaa Aquarian
My poem is about the experiences that a soldier goes through when fighting in war and going on with life after war. Throughout the poem, it follows the journey of a soldier from the start of his journey, to the end of his journey.
In the begging of this project I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to write about. Our choices to write about were; Truth, Violence, Power, Peace or War. At first, I was inspired to write about power because I felt that there were so many different perspectives on power. However, I remembered a book that we read in class called ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. This book is about the experience of war through the eyes of a soldier named Paul. Throughout this book, the author uses imagery to make the experiences of war intriguing. The imagery used in the book gave a different and new perspective on war. It made you see the scenery that was being set from the imagery, very vividly in your head. I decided that I wanted my poem to have the same effect that this book had on me, being the reader. Personally, since I am more of a descriptive writer, I decided to write about war because of having read this book. To me, it seemed that writing about war would be very interesting if I was able to create unique war scenes in the reader’s head while they read my poem.
I wrote out my first draft and surprisingly, it turned out to be a strong first draft. I used some different poetry techniques such as imagery, oxymoron, similes, metaphors and figurative language. The structure of my poem took a form of free verse writing that I feel made it flow nicely. Then suddenly I had two more inspirations for my poem. I had recently got two new songs and had been listening to them when I realized that some of the lyrics conveyed some of the things that I wanted to say in my poem. These songs are called 24 by Jem, and Battle Scars by Lupe Fiasco. Battle Scars is about being at war with love and 24 is about a girl who only has 24 hours let to live. Even though neither of these songs was actually about war, some of the lyrics spoke to me and I was able to relate them to my idea of a war experience. For example, in the song 24, there is a lyric that says: “in 24 hours they’ll be lying flowers on my life, its over tonight”. I related this to how I think a soldier would feel in a battle, never knowing how much time he has left. These songs gave me many more ideas that helped shape my poem.
Continuing down the road of this project, my poem was critiqued by my peers and by Lori herself. Doing the peer critiques gave me more ideas and helped make my poem stronger and stronger. Finally I finished my poem and overall, I am very proud of it. I feel like I achieved my goal of making my poem have the power to create images in people’s minds when they read.
My poem is about the experiences that a soldier goes through when fighting in war and going on with life after war. Throughout the poem, it follows the journey of a soldier from the start of his journey, to the end of his journey.
In the begging of this project I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to write about. Our choices to write about were; Truth, Violence, Power, Peace or War. At first, I was inspired to write about power because I felt that there were so many different perspectives on power. However, I remembered a book that we read in class called ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. This book is about the experience of war through the eyes of a soldier named Paul. Throughout this book, the author uses imagery to make the experiences of war intriguing. The imagery used in the book gave a different and new perspective on war. It made you see the scenery that was being set from the imagery, very vividly in your head. I decided that I wanted my poem to have the same effect that this book had on me, being the reader. Personally, since I am more of a descriptive writer, I decided to write about war because of having read this book. To me, it seemed that writing about war would be very interesting if I was able to create unique war scenes in the reader’s head while they read my poem.
I wrote out my first draft and surprisingly, it turned out to be a strong first draft. I used some different poetry techniques such as imagery, oxymoron, similes, metaphors and figurative language. The structure of my poem took a form of free verse writing that I feel made it flow nicely. Then suddenly I had two more inspirations for my poem. I had recently got two new songs and had been listening to them when I realized that some of the lyrics conveyed some of the things that I wanted to say in my poem. These songs are called 24 by Jem, and Battle Scars by Lupe Fiasco. Battle Scars is about being at war with love and 24 is about a girl who only has 24 hours let to live. Even though neither of these songs was actually about war, some of the lyrics spoke to me and I was able to relate them to my idea of a war experience. For example, in the song 24, there is a lyric that says: “in 24 hours they’ll be lying flowers on my life, its over tonight”. I related this to how I think a soldier would feel in a battle, never knowing how much time he has left. These songs gave me many more ideas that helped shape my poem.
Continuing down the road of this project, my poem was critiqued by my peers and by Lori herself. Doing the peer critiques gave me more ideas and helped make my poem stronger and stronger. Finally I finished my poem and overall, I am very proud of it. I feel like I achieved my goal of making my poem have the power to create images in people’s minds when they read.