LITR 3731 Creative Writing UHCL sample student poetry submission 2008

LITR 3731: Creative Writing 2008
Student Poetry Submission

Amber Buitron

For You…

A million times I’ve needed you

A million times I’ve cried,

If love could’ve saved you,

You never would’ve died.

Words we feel most deeply

Are the hardest things to say-

My dearest one I loved you,

In a very special way.

If I could have one lifetime wish,

One dream that would come true,

I’d pray to God with all my heart,

For yesterday and for you.

Revision Account

Let me start off by saying that I wrote this poem for a mother who lost her 3 year old son to cancer. She asked me to help her write a poem to express how she felt on the first anniversary of his death.

I didn’t get too many comments or suggestion changes so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. J I did get some suggestions to change the title which I thought was good advice. I decided to change the title to “For You”. I chose that title for two reasons. One reason was because he was the initial point of the poem. She wanted her son back and that’s what she was praying for. And the second reason was because I thought the poem could be viewed as a dedication or tribute to her son.

In Line 3 I add the word “My” to signify the mother’s love for her child. It wasn’t just any love, it was her love. I capitalized it because I thought it would exemplify just how strong her love was for her son.

I changed Line 5 to “Words we feel most deeply”. I felt that by changing “things” to “words” would help my reader to relate to the problem of feeling and thinking about something so passionately and desperately you can’t begin to describe or put into words. I felt that her pain was, and still is, so real that she could not even speak of him without tearing up.

There were also some suggestions with punctuation that I used to help my poem flow well. In Line 6 I used a hyphen to keep the sentence going.

I also liked the suggestion to separate the poem every 4^th line. (Thanks Tanya!)J I thought that by separating the poem like that, would help make the breaks more visible and help notate the shift in speech.

I think that the suggestions and comments from my peers were very beneficial and constructive in helping adjust my poem. I think that the strength of my poem was the ability to evoke emotions. I received several comments telling me how sincere and heartfelt the poem was and how I succeeded in drawing the reader into the poem.

As far as future developments I don’t think I would want to publish my work or make any other changes. The poem was written before this class and it served its purpose a few years ago. I was able to pay tribute to a very special boy and that is gratitude enough for me.

If…

(Original)