Veronica Nadalin

A Question

What could cause such happiness

That it hovers over the heads

Of the starry-eyed lovers?

Love in its purest form.

Warm and bright. All encompassing-

Even in the darkest night.

Only known by a lucky few-

A gift so rare and precious-

A gift so raw and bare.

Can the lovers take it all?

Or will it lead to their fall?

Original Version:

Love causing such happiness

Love causing such happiness

That it hovers over the heads

Of the star-crossed lovers.

Love in its purest form

Warm and bright. All encompassing

Even in the darkest night.

Revision Account

The poem originated by me trying to come up with something to present to the class.  I frequently write poetry on my own, but I was afraid that using something that I had previously written would be considered as plagiarism, even if I had not used the previous work for any assignment.  Also, most of my poetry is personal; it is a way for me to express my feelings, so I did not feel comfortable with sharing something like that with a basically unfamiliar audience.  Thus, this is how I came up with the poem that I submitted as my assignment for class.  I do not really know how I came up with the concept; it just came to me.  However, after doing the readings, which, of course I did after writing the poem, I realized that I should have picked a different subject for my poem.

I must confess that I was terrified about what my classmates and professor were going to say about my poem.  I am a bit of a control freak and despise with every fiber of my being with being the center of attention, especially if it involves something that I have written creatively.  Ever since the creative writing course I took my freshman year where the professor told me that I could  not write, I feel myself turn bright red, my face grow hot, and I start to tremble when I ever have to share any of my own work in any class.  I did go through this process when I presented my poem, but the feedback I received was encouraging and I did not feel as if I was being personally attacked.  I learned that I needed to develop my ideas, not only because the poem was short, but because everyone had a different interpretation of the poem.  To be honest, I, myself, was not sure how I wanted the poem t be interpreted, but I did not realize that it was that open to interpretation.  With this in mind, I went back and tried to make the poem more focused without making limiting it to only one interpretation.

Most of the reactions were positive.  Many classmates said that they could “see the image” in their heads and that my use of enjambment and consonance made the poem “good.”  I noticed that most of the negative comments were that the poem was about love.  I realize that love is not a very original topic, but I found it interesting that only the guys commented that it should be something else.  I received comments from a few female classmates that they are suckers for “sappy” love poems, which made me smile.  I used these comments to try to make my poem less “sappy” and to find a way to reach a larger audience by trying to take the word “love” out of the poet and only imply that the poem is about love.

The changes/revisions I made are that I did not make “love” the first word of the poem and gave the poem a title.  I also changed “star-crossed” to “starry-eyed” and changed the focus of the poem on dealing with the difficulties love can cause instead of the idea of love in general.  I also added another stanza with enjambment to hint at the trouble love can cause and ended the poem with a couplet to add some diversity to the poem’s format.

The current status of my submission is that it is the fifth draft.  I must admit that I am not good at blowing the horn on my own work, but I think the poem is much clearer than it was originally.  I do not know if I want to work on this poem anymore; I am kind of tired of it now.  One could say that the poem is part of a larger work because I keep all of the poetry that I write and I add poetry frequently to my blog on wordpress.com. It would be awesome if any of my work was ever published.  In fact a poem I wrote a few years ago made it into the yearly publication of The International Society of Poetry.  I frequently submit my work whoever, whenever, and whatever because I figure that getting my name out there is the first step if I ever want to get anywhere with my writing.