LITR 3731: Creative Writing
Student Poetry Submission 2005
Devon Kitch
Four
(final version)
Friends, we are moving
Apart in our lives.
Moving
Apart in our thoughts.
Where once we were
Inseparable.
Perhaps we can stay the same
Memories
fossilized
Forever
Frozen
In time’s fantastical reflection
Friendships falter
Subside
And remain
And though I try to refrain from
changing
I wake up and find myself changed.
We will never relive our days of
Drunken ex-boyfriend house wrapping
Spur of the moment river rafting
And watching the sun rise as we drive
Home
From
somewhere we never should have been.
Those days when recklessness
pervaded
and elated
our suburban lives.
I miss you all as we were
And as we are now
Lost in the monotony
Busy with the business
of what may seem important.
We--the friends time cannot stress
the four that must remain
though less and less.
(original submission)
Four
Friends, we are moving
Apart in our lives.
Moving
Apart in our thoughts.
Where once we were
Inseparable.
Perhaps we can stay the same
Memories
fossilized
Forever
Frozen
In time’s fantastical reflection
Friendships falter
Subside
And remain
And though I try to refrain from
changing
I wake up and find myself changed.
We will never relive our days of
Drunken ex-boyfriend house wrapping
Spur of the moment river rafting
And watching the sun rise as we drive
Home
From
somewhere we never should have been.
Those days when recklessness
pervaded
and elated
our suburban lives.
I miss you all as we were
And as we are now
Lost in the monotony
Busy with the business
of what may seem important.
We- the ones time will not stress
the four that must remain to tempt time’s
test.
I decided to change several things about the poem largely due to the urgings of the class. However, I could not bring myself to remove the archaic “pervaded” from the line “Those days when recklessness pervaded”. “Pervaded” best conveys my meaning even though it is a bit more uncommon than other word choices. I took out several of my other archaic words and replaced them with suitable alternatives. I changed “of what we deem important” to “of what may seem important”. I changed the entire next to last line from “We- the four that time cannot digress” to “We-the friends time will not stress”. I removed “four” to avoid repetition. Indeed, time puts stress on relationships, but this is much closer to my intended meaning than “digress” and sounds less out-dated. I capitalized a couple more words that seemed to need it and removed the period from “Home.”. The period created a pause that the readers noticed and I did not intend. I decided to leave “busy with the business” even though it had a couple of objections. I wanted it to sound more like “Busy with the busy-ness”, but that isn’t a word. I suppose with poetry you can create words to suit your needs, but I believe that busy-ness would distract the reader. The line “I wake up and find that friendship strained” sounds good, but I really wanted to write “I wake up and find myself changed” or “I wake up and find that I am changed”. Now I think the latter sounds best, but my revision contains the former.
I fully welcome and appreciate the advice and criticism of the class. I did not notice most of the poem’s flaws that an extra set of eyes saw. Having my work scrutinized wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I did struggle with the changes to my “archaic” language because I really do use words like “deem” and “pervaded” in my everyday language; so I guess that would be further proof of my weirdness. I almost felt as if I had to dumb down the more intelligent word choices to match the common words. I tried to reach a compromise by leaving some of the words and removing others.
I am actually giving this poem to my friends along with their WAY overdue Christmas presents. The poem conveys my conflicting feelings of sadness, hope, and happiness with friendships that are growing up. “Four” represents my feelings of becoming a mother and leaving behind the things that seemed so important at eighteen, twenty, and even twenty two.