LITR 3731: Creative Writing 2008
Student Poetry Submission
Amanda Hanne
Rosa
Unconscious beauty -
Never boastful or vain
Graceful -
Like that of spring rain
Effortlessly Angelic -
So pure and divine
Love -
Growing like that of your vine
Unseen Enchantment -
Lost in you with no return
Desire -
For it is you that I yearn
Every color has its significance
Voiced through shades of the rose
Unconventionally in you,
They gather as one – a Rose
Revision Account
It took me a while to start writing this poem. I am not very good at writing poetry and really didn’t have any topics to write on. I was sitting there at work one day and told my friend that I think I should write my poem about a rose. I guess what fascinates me more about roses is that my middle name is Rose. When talking to my friend and telling her what I had to do for class she gave me some opinions on what I should do. I explained that I wanted to write a poem on roses and what each color of the rose means. Later after I looked on a website that told me what each rose color meant I thought about, hey some of those meanings of the roses, describes me. I wanted to write a poem that presented a woman and her different qualities compared to a rose. My first draft wasn’t that great, I could only come up with a few stanzas. Later I added two more. I changed the ending after I had a few draft exchanges with two people. My first draft went a little something like this:
Rosa
Unconscious beauty
Never boastful or vain
Gracefulness
Like that of spring rain
Angelic
So pure and divine
Love
Growing like that of your vine
Every color has its significance
In you they gather as one
Below is the information that my first draft exchange person gave to me. This is one my friends that does poetry a lot and is a genius when it comes to poetry.
Amanda,
While looking over your poem “Rosa” I found a couple of things that could use some tuning up. First, I really feel that punctuation should be added. I have given you some suggestions on where you could put some punctuation.
In the first stanza, after Unconscious beauty, insert a colon. In the second line of your first stanza I believe a hyphen would work well. After the third line in your first stanza insert a comma. Finally at the end of the last line in your first stanza insert a period. If you made these changes your first stanza will read as so…
Unconscious Beauty:
Never boastful or vain -
Gracefulness,
Like that of spring rain.
The punctuation makes the stanza flow better. I would follow the same punctuation flow in every stanza.
Second, in your second stanza where it reads “So pure and divine” I took out “So” that way it would read *Pure and divine*.
I like the way that it seems as if you are giving the definition on each characteristic. But, I don’t feel that the lines reading “Love/Growing like that of your vine” really fit with the rest of your poem. An alternate suggestion that I have come up with could read *Intensions/Growing on each separate vine*
In your third stanza, I really like the wording of it and really wouldn't change much. All I would alter is in the last line I would take out the word “For”. That way the line would read *It is you that I desire*. Also, I inserted different punctuation in this stanza than in the prior ones. The way I added then your stanza would read…
Enchanted -
Lost in your charms.
Desire,
It is you that I long.
I was a bit confused as to how colors tie into the poem. It seems as if the last two lines are a different poem. Being that I speak Spanish I know that “Rosa” means Rose. So, I can only assume that these would be the different meaning of the colors of the roses. But, you need to somehow introduce that you are referring to the colors and their meanings. I have come up with a fourth stanza that you could add that would better tie in your finishing lines. My suggestion would be…
Indication,
Voicing through shades of the rose.
Vindication,
Propositions from which that is chose.
I like the last two lines and how they tie that the description of each type of rose is combined into one person. I did think that the last line could be tweaked a little. I wrote it to read…
Every color has its significance,
Unconventionally in you,
They gather as one.
Inserting *Unconventionally* is implying that it is a rare thing to find all these wonderful qualities in one person.
Over all the poem as good. The comparison of a women to a rose is beautiful.
My second draft exchange person was Rachel Davis from our Creative Writing class. She had many good suggestions and I used her ideas.
Hey Amanda –
I really enjoyed reading your poem. I think it has a lot of potential because it is simple but seems to carry a strong symbolic meaning. I’ll be honest I don’t really like having to critique other people’s work! Anyway, here are some possible edits I considered for the poem.
Stanza 1:
Line 1: Change unconscious to oblivious (They are obviously synonyms but oblivious seems to flow better with the idea that the object in question is intrinsically unaware of how naturally beautiful it is)
Line 3: Change gracefulness to graceful (I am really into symmetry and since the rest of the stanzas contain the most basic form of the word, graceful might fit better but still carries the same meaning)
Line 4: I was just curious as to why you capitalized Spring Rain. Not that it should change but it stands out as significant. Maybe you could carry the imagery of spring rain or the rejuvenating effects of spring rain through the poem.
Stanza 2:
Line 1: I would consider adding another descriptive word before angelic, again to fulfill the symmetry of the poem. I originally though of just deleting the word “unconscious” from Stanza 1, Line 1, but I thought that it was too essential to the point of that stanza that it would probably be more effective to add a descriptive modifier to the other words. I thought maybe Softly Angelic would work or something along those lines to emphasize the subtle yet powerful.
Stanza 3:
This stanza was probably my favorite of all. However, it sticks out a little bit within the poem. It is within this stanza that I began to think maybe this poem was about some kind of unbridled desire or maybe an unrequited love. I’m not sure if this was your point but I think you could run with it. If you intended this theme I would try to make it more obvious in Stanza 1. It works in Stanza 2 because you mention growing love and merge it with the image of the flower growing on the vine.
Line 1: Again try adding a descriptive word. Maybe something like Utterly Enchanted.
Line 2: I wanted to make this line and line 4 rhyme just like 2 and 4 have rhymed in the previous stanzas. I came up with two options you could try (see line 4 also because I changed the rhyme there) Either: Lost in you without concern OR To a point of no return
Line 4: Change to It is for you that I yearn (Yearn rhymes really well so it can give you more options for tweaking line 2 to say what you want.)
Stanza 4:
This is absolutely not necessary for the effect of your poem but I think it would look good if you extended this stanza to match the form of the others. I played around with it a little bit but since I don’t know the context of the poem from your POV it may be way off.
Line 1: Distinctive Colors
Line 2: Each in their place
Line 3: (I will be honest, I couldn’t come up with any one word to make fit here the way I wanted but I am sure you will have more luck if you so choose. For some reason I kept thinking of the idea of Cosmos or perfect ordered beauty, so that would be a possible option but you would have to depend on the reader understanding that message.)
Line 4:In you they gather as one (I REALLY like this line. I think that if you use the theme of love/desire and manifest it through the image of the rose that this line sums it up really well.)
In the end I learned a lot from writing this poem and I learned that poems are just as hard to write as I thought it was in the first place. I can not wait to do my fictional piece. I hope that you think that the poem is good because I do.
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