LITR 3731: Creative Writing 2008
Student Poetry Submission
Rachel Davis
This is Love
Not good enough.
It’s all in my head.
I am just not that tough,
if only I’d stayed in bed.
It’s all in my head.
Accusations make you scream.
If only’ I’d stayed in bed,
our love was perfect in my dream.
Accusations make you scream:
“Don’t you understand?
Our love was perfect in my dream
This reality is unplanned.”
Don’t YOU understand?
We feel the same way.
This reality is unplanned,
but we will make it another day.
We feel the same way,
You own my heart through and through.
We will make it another day,
this I promise you.
“You own my heart through and through”
he says every time.
But I promise you boy,
I will not live this rhyme
He says every time,
“Don’t worry my dear.”
I will not live this rhyme
if there is no fear!
“Don’t worry my dear
one day you will see
if there is no fear
you’ll get bored with me!”
Draft Exchange:
I was having trouble deciding what to write on when I initially began this project. I felt there were many issues close to my heart that I could write passionately on. However, I had trouble finding the right words to describe how I felt about such personal issues.
In an attempt to move forward in my process, I decided to start out with a metered poem and see what I could do. I played around with a few ideas but everything I tried seemed childish and ineffective.
One morning my boyfriend and I were fighting about a female coworker of his that I am jealous of. My jealousy stems from insecurity but nevertheless evokes many emotions (and arguments!). So, while doing laundry and thinking about our argument I had a moment, almost like an epiphany, where the words fell into place.
I didn’t do much initial tinkering because I was pleased with how raw the poem came out naturally. Interestingly enough, while working through the first few stanzas of the poem and trying to develop the closing stanzas, I had yet another epiphany like moment. Somehow writing down my feelings into the form of the poetry made me realize, as the last two lines state “If there was no fear, you’d get bored with me.” I found that I had captured, at least in part, the answer to our ongoing futile arguments. People, or maybe just females, have a natural tendency towards drama because it can keep things interesting. (As long as it’s petty drama!)
I emailed Draft 1 and Draft 2 of my poem to Amanda for peer review and explained that I had attempted to write a Pantoum inspired by this argument. She gave me lots of great advice about adding stanzas to make the poem more understandable to the reader. It is hard sometimes to remember that when everyone else reads this poem they will not have the experience behind it that I do.
Due to Amanda’s commentary, I realized that the poem may not be getting the message across that I wanted. The first change I made in accordance with Amanda’s suggestions was the title. She said that there was a big disconnect between the subject matter in the poem and the title. She suggested adding a stanza at the beginning to further define the jealousy by mentioning the other girl. After thinking about it, I decided to change the title instead because jealousy really was not the idea of the poem that I wanted to emphasize.
I made the mistake of following the example from our handouts too closely and failed to realize that I could actually add as many stanzas’ as I wanted. With this is mind, I decided do a major revision to try and make the poem a little more clearly. However, I chose to have my close friend (Candyce Gonzalez) who is a few semesters away from graduating and becoming a teacher, do a second edit on the same versions of the poem Amanda did.
Candyce actually made a lot of the same suggestions as Amanda which helped me realize what I really needed to change. Her first suggestion was that the title doesn’t fit with the subject. She helped me with a few small word changes that made the flow of the poem much smoother. She also reminded me that I was not writing an MLA research paper, so using conjunctions was probably acceptable. When I reworked this aspect I found that it is more appealing because it doesn’t look as formal and wordy.
I also decided to go ahead and expand the content of the poem to make it a little fuller, since this was mentioned by both my editors. This was a daunting task! Since I already had the rhyme scheme and everything worked out I was intimidated to try and tinker with it. I chose to just start writing sentences that better described the tensions I’ve experienced in our relationship.
The poem quickly evolved from simply addressing an insecurity issue to expressing a lot of my fears and feelings about how rocky things have been between us since we moved in together. I wanted to emphasize that even though these tensions exist we are still in love. With this in mind I tried to give my poem almost a narrative effect in that I start with getting out of bed, move into the tension, express the underlying love, and come to, in my opinion, a very true conclusion about the mysteries of figuring out love and relationships.
I really enjoyed the draft exchange process. In retrospect I wish I had partnered with a second classmate for another peer review. Although my friend helped me immensely, I feel that a classmate would have been able to give more specific advice to working the content and style of the poem. I am glad that I chose to work with a metered verse because it proved to be more difficult than free verse but helped me get into “poetry mode.” I am happy with the poem as it is, but I would love to find the time to develop it even further. My future plan is to develop the poem and eventually give it to my boyfriend as a testament to the effort we’ve put into making the relationship work. My hope is that he won’t take it the wrong way!
Draft 1:
Too fat
Its in your head
Why is that?
I should have stayed in bed
It is all in your head
He says every time
I should have stayed in bed
Then I would not be living this rhyme
He says every time
Do not worry my dear
I would not be living this rhyme
If there was no fear
“Do not worry my dear
One day you will see
If there was no fear
You would get bored with me”
Draft 2:
Jealousy
Not good enough
It is in your head
Just not that tough
I should have stayed in bed
It is in your head
He says every time
I should have stayed in bed
I would not be living this rhyme
He says every time
“Do not worry my dear”
But, I would not be living this rhyme
If there was no fear
“Do notworry my dear
One day you will see
If there was no fear
You would get bored with me”
Draft 3:
??????????????
Not good enough
It’s all in my head
Just not that tough
If only I’d stayed in bed
It’s all in my head
He says every time
If only I’d stayed in bed
I wouldn’t be living this rhyme
He says every time
“Don’t worry my dear”
I wouldn’t be living this rhyme
If there was no fear
“Don’t worry my dear
One day you will see
If there was no fear
You’d get bored with me”
The Freeway War
Just GO …
… You’re too slow
A sea of red lights
Torments and tests
Every ounce of patience
Zipping…
…Whipping
Lane to lane
Let’s play speed racer
A game of cat and mouse
Not so close…
… A swerve and a miss
Next time please try
Keeping it in between
The mayonnaise and the mustard
Screeeech …
…Skids
Black footprints found
Among rolling lanes of gray
True testament to a deadly game
I wanted to enclose another poem I am working on just for some review. I was inspired in this poem by my daily trips into downtown Houston. Freeway driving in Houston, Texas is an adventure on a daily basis. I plan on developing this poem further because I think it has potential and I like playing with the different words and phrases that help reinforce the idea of freeway driving. I would love the opportunity for edits or feedback on this poem and hope to find a peer who is willing to critique!
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