Niki Bippen

"An Autumn Memorial"

I see you there in your funeral garb,

A procession of crisp colors.

The fleeting sound of birds

Migrating your final farewells,

And bitter notes of solemn

Song.

The wind carries the balm of

Sunset and decay, partners to

The perfumed flesh of your

Solstice.

The sun drops her head in the west

Beneath a veil of bloodied colors.

With one last stretch of clouds, she

Waves goodbye to the warm and living

Season.

The Revision Account

            After several hours of browsing autumn scenery pictures in hopes of finding a good wallpaper for my computer, I noticed one was titled "a memorial in autumn".  The picture wasn't particularly interesting but the title gave me an interesting way of looking at fall: as a memorial for summer.  Although this picture did not showcase this idea, for some reason my brain chose to conjure it up.  I didn't think anymore about this idea until hours later when I was jarred out of my sleep to scribble down the poem.  I didn't touch it again until the morning. 

            When I began fine turning it, I made a mental note to really focus on imagery and to fully develop the scene.  Autumn is full of rich colors and I didn't want to downplay this so I really paid attention to creating vibrant scenes.  I wanted my readers to see the images as clearly as I did.  I also made sure to draw attention to the key words and themes of the poem: solstice and season (and later after my revisions: song).  I didn't want my reader to get so lost in the imagery that they forgot about what the poem was saying so I decided the best approach was to move these to their own line.  Whether skim read, slowly read, or read aloud this drew the reader's attention. 

First Copy of Poem

"An Autumn Memorial"

I see you there in your funeral garb,
A procession of crisp colors
With the fleeting sound of birds
Migrating with your final farewells
And bitter notes of solemn song.

The wind carries the stench of
Sunset and decay, equals to
The perfumed flesh of your
Solstice.
The sun drops her head in the west
Beneath a veil of bloodied colors.
With one last stretch of clouds, she
Waves goodbye to the warm and living

Season.

Line by Line Revisions

I see you there in your funeral garb,

Although most of my readers were okay with this line, I absolutely despised it! However, after much consideration and many hours spent trying to fix the line (I just did not like the there you are suggestion given by many of my classmates) I decided to leave it as is with the hope that over the period of enough time, I will find a fitting replacement.
A procession of crisp colors
With the fleeting sound of birds

One of the suggestions that Dr. White, Faron, and many other classmates gave me was eliminating with from this line. Doing so eliminated the bulky feel of the line and made the poem easier and more enjoyable to read.  Simple changes like these really helped my poem out overall!
Migrating with your final farewells

Dr. White, Faron, my friend Alex and again several classmates suggested I eliminate "with" from this line as well. This change strengthened the line a lot and "with" was unnecessary here from the beginning; just extra clutter.
And bitter notes of solemn song.

So many students, and Dr. White included, wanted me to get rid of and. I strongly considered it, but I ended up keeping it. I didn't want the farewells to be bitter notes of solemn song I wanted them to be two separate experiences: farewells and bitter notes. I also moved song to its own line. Alicia, Faron, Dr. White, and many more students wanted to see song get its own line. I was hesitant at first, but after looking at it visually and reading it aloud, I decided it was a good change.  It made the structure of my poem more concrete and added great balance and set up a good consonance. In my opinion, it was one of the best changes I made.

The wind carries the stench of

In this line, Dr. White suggested I change stench to something else. He said it contrasted with the other beautiful imagery I had set up and may add unnecessary harshness. My friend Lauren also made the same suggestion and agreed with Dr. White. I came up with balm and we all agreed that this sounded a lot better.
Sunset and decay, equals to
The perfumed flesh of your
Solstice.

I ended up adding a stanza break here after Solstice. It was one of the suggestions made by my classmates, Alicia in particular, and I really liked it.  It drew more attention to solstice (which is what I wanted from the very beginning.) and alleviated a lot of bulkiness that this stanza had. Again, it helped strengthen the structure of my poem.
The sun drops her head in the west
Beneath a veil of bloodied colors.
With one last stretch of clouds, she
Waves goodbye to the warm and living

A lot of students wanted me to move warm and living to its own line. I debated on this, but to me at least it took attention off of solstice and season and drew attention to itself.  I did not want to focus on the warm and live things in the poem, I wanted to focus on imagery, colors, and a little bit of the macabre. Also, it would read too choppy if I were to separate it.

Season.

I chose to move season closer to the stanza because although being off on its own drew a lot of attention, structurally it made my poem look/sound a little strange.  About half of the class was for me changing it and the other half was for me leaving it.  I was torn down the middle as well and I may eventually change it back, I'm unsure right now.  Removing the extra break will also rid my poem of a possibly overdramatic pause and will flow better when read aloud.  However, I may lose the visual impact and it may blend in too much.  I am still working with this.

I did choose to keep the capitalization of each line.  It is a personal preference and all of my poems are done this way. It has become a tag of sorts I suppose you could say and it bothers me to not do my poems like this.  I also chose to leave the grammar of the poem as is. Some students were complaining about the commas and what not but to me at least, I feel like the punctuation helps to distinguish points and sentences. 

In Conclusion

            Overall, I feel my poem has strengthened tenfold with the workshop and has blossomed into a piece that I am proud of.  There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to it and it is far from perfect, but I feel that I am on the right track now to bettering this poem and turning into something truly beautiful.  Without the suggestions my poem would still be laying as flat and useless as a squashed earthworm on concrete. 

            This creative writing workshop has helped me out a lot not just with this poem but other pieces of my work as well. I am able to take back what students have suggested and apply them to other pieces too.  Even suggestions given to other poems, not necessarily mine, have helped me. I feel my poetry will continue to improve from this workshop.