LITR 3731: Creative Writing 2006
Student Poetry Submission

Joanna Ellis

Redemption

(final draft)

A naïve romance

Two roses bud

Love turns hard—brown, blue, black

The stench of unfaithful lust

Romance, in its rags, no treasures can console

Tattered

Weary

A soft kiss of wind

Swept high in the clutch of a Savior

Flown far from memories

Where two Roses bloom for all Eternity

 _____________________________________________________________________

Redemption

(first draft)

A naïve romance with a hasty covenant

Two roses root

Love turns hard—brown, blue, black

A stench of unfaithfulness

Romance, in its rags, no treasures can console

Beaten

A soft kiss of wind

Scooped high in the clutch of an Eagle

Flown far from….

Where two roses bloom for eternity

Poem Writing Process:

When I realized that I would be writing a poem I was completely lost. I had no idea where to start. Even the information provided through the book was total Greek to me. I bounced around possible topics every day or so, but it was one night after class that I was inspired. When I got home from class I told my husband the problem I was having. With this, he was off on a quest to fix my problem! Immediately he began rattling off events that have made a mark on my life. I have always heard that this type of “idea bouncing” is really helpful when you have writer’s block, but I never truly believed it until this moment: “What about your mom’s life struggles, and Mike (my biological father)?” he suggested. It was then that I saw, not my mom or Mike, but my stepfather (my real father) scooping up, and rescuing my mom, sister, and me. His coming into our lives radically changed our futures. I knew that I wanted this poem to stretch from the relationship between my mom and Mike to our salvation, not just in being rescued by my step-dad, but the salvation we found in Christ as we were reintroduced to the church as a result of my real dad.

            It’s crazy because, as you can see, I actually started working on the end of the poem rather than the beginning. I knew that I wanted to let all of my words have multiple meanings, letting them do the work for me. Therefore, rather than having a very long poem, I was able to put a lot of depth into a 12 line poem. I also knew that I wanted to be somewhat vague, letting the reader interpret the poem as it applied to their life, however still having a sense for the underlying meaning…my meaning.

            This is a copy of my very first draft with a few remarks:

                        A naïve romance with a hasty covenant

                        Two roses bud/root ßI had a hard time deciding a word here

                        Love turns hard—brown, blue, black

                        A stench of unfaithfulness/lust/distrust ßagain, hard word decisions

                        Romance, in its rags, no treasures can console

Beaten

                        A soft kiss of wind

                        Scooped high in the clutch of an Eagle

                        Flown far from…. ßI could not find a word

                        Where two roses bloom for eternity

Though this is the first draft it is not much different than the final draft. I felt that there were several instances where words or phrases made reading and interpreting difficult, thus I attempted some changes, and eventually found my way to a productive end…for now. For instance: I knew that the word ‘hasty’ in the first line gave an image of a woman pregnant, thus having to get married quickly. This is NOT what was happening at all. Also, in the seventh line is the word ‘Eagle’. Interestingly, this was actually a suggestion in class as an alternative for Savior (which is what I chose for the final draft). I did not want to use the word “Eagle” because, though I wanted the image of an eagle to appear in the reader’s mind, I wanted it to be secondary to the Christ image. I chose words like ‘clutch’ and ‘flown’ to help with this Eagle imagery instead of saying it outright.

Discussion Leader’s Comments:

Theresa, my discussion leader, comments: “In the first stanza it seems that you’re describing a person who fell in love with someone, believing, perhaps naively, that this was a true love that would last forever. Then this pure love, in a heart so tender, is tainted and bruised by the ugliness of betrayal. Despite the attempts to sooth the terrible injustice with flowers and kindness, it’s over”. Her analysis makes it clear that it was the best decision to take out the word ‘hasty’, and that choosing to keep ‘Savior’ was helpful in emphasizing the important idea of one being rescued.

In-Class Discussion:

            I loved the in-class discussion and thought that it was very helpful, but, as I will expound later, I felt that many of the suggested changes would alter the overall non-style style and tone of the poem. Here are some suggestions, why I considered them, and why I chose to accept or discard them:

            Line 4: ‘The stench of unfaithful lust’ ßstench changing to rot or thorns. Though I like the idea of carrying the nature/rose theme through the poem, in the end I wanted the roses to stand-alone. They are symbols of my sister and me; therefore to carry them through the poem as a symbol of nature would make it unclear that they are, in fact, representing two daughters.

Line 9: “Scooped high in the clutch…” ßscooped changing to Swept. I actually really liked this idea. At first (even when I initially wrote this revision account) I was going to leave this wording alone. After stepping back for a day, repeating the line in my mind a million times, I decided that Scooped was too harsh. Though I did want the alliteration with the ‘c’ sounds in Scooped and clutch, I just felt that replacing a harsh word was far more important to the poem than applying some fun alliteration. Another concern I had was that the word Swept would make the line too dreamy. However, after a lot of consideration, I decided that this was a necessary change, and that Swept was the perfect replacement for Scooped.

Line 10: adding 3 dense descriptive words to the end of the line to mirror line 3 ßThis idea was intriguing to me. I actually sat down and attempted to make this work with words like ‘light’, ‘white’, ‘golden’, but it seemed too forced. I like the idea of mirroring, and I will probably turn it over in my mind, and on paper, more once the semester slows down, but for now there is no mirroring between the two lines.

Future Revision:

I actually plan to give this, my very first poem, to my parents as a gift because they were essentially my inspiration in writing it. This, of course, means that I had to come to some sort of contentment with the poem in order to feel good about wrapping it. With the revision I made before class discussion, and the changes I have considered and made post class discussion I feel that this final draft meets that criteria. However, I do plan to try working with the mirroring idea between lines 3 and 10. If this leads me to writing a whole new poem that will be perfectly fine with me. I do not foresee this particular poem being published, but I do plan to attempt writing and publishing future poetry.