Amanda Pruett

Forgotten

Sacrificing for others—

ensuring their happiness

. . . overwhelming.

Dark waters crashing,

unsuspecting waves pushing me under.

Too much-

I cannot mention this.

“Selfish, Careless,”

 they pierce through me

slicing my soul.

Feelings do not matter—

 unnoticed.

Guilt curls around me,

a snake and a lifeless victim.

Only there when convenient.

 Ignore my presence and pretend—

I do not exist.

Nothing more than a mere memory,

Scripted upon my tomb.

 Unbeloved soul.

("Forgotten," the poem above, is the final draft from two drafts below)

Second Draft:

Murdered Soul

Always helping others-

ensuring happiness,

. . . overwhelming.

Dark waters crashing,

unsuspecting waves pushing me under.

Too much-

I cannot mention this.

“selfish, careless”

 They pierce through me

Slicing my soul.

Feelings do not matter-

 unnoticed.

Guilt curls around me,

a snake and a lifeless victim

Only there when convenient.

 Ignore my presence and pretend-

I do not exist.

Nothing more than a mere memory,

Scripted upon my tomb.

 Unwanted soul.

Original:

Murdered Soul

Always helping others-

ensuring happiness.

. . . overwhelming.

Mention of any aspect of this

 leads to “selfish, careless.”

Feelings do not matter

 and go unnoticed.

Ignore my presence and pretend

I do not exist.

Nothing more than a mere memory,

only there when convenient.

Find another unsuspecting soul

to kill.

Revision Account

            When I realized that writing my own poem for the midterm was a requirement, I instantly became nervous. Poetry has never been my strong point and I have always avoided it for this reason. I’ve always had an interest in writing fiction, but never poetry; therefore, my poem did not pre-exist before this course. I imagined writing a free verse poem would be simple enough, so I decided that I could complete it in one quick sitting. After a couple of unproductive hours, I realized that I was forcing my poem. I had a few ideas written out, but nothing was developed. I put it aside and began to watch a movie. As I sat following the story line, the intensity of one character in particular caught my attention. She was making soft remarks towards her existence being invisible to others in the world. Someone only noticed her missing after work began to pile up. I have been in a situation similar so it was clear that a poem written from experience would better suit me. I worked on this for three nights before I finally concluded my poem; however, after reading it out loud, I realized it was not what I had imagined. I tried to work with it a little more, but decided that a revision might be more beneficial than trying to blindly adjust it. I sent it to three different people. Krista and Candice know me personally while Christi only knows me through the conversations that have occurred during class. I figured that three people would be enough to critique this small poem; unfortunately, this was not the case. I received a very satisfying response from Christi who provided me with helpful critiques, but the responses from Krista and Candice were less than I had hoped. Though they read my poem and spend quite some time reviewing it, they each only offered me one suggestion. I passed the poem on to my boyfriend, Stephen. His first reaction was, “this sounds like a sophisticated suicide note.” The poem did turn out a bit more dark than I had intended, but in the end I was still pleased with the tone. I try to find a positive aspect in any and every thing, so when I was able to produce such a poem, I felt some relief. I cannot explain why I felt this or where it came from. I can only assume that it was built up frustration and this poem was my therapy.

I knew I was missing something in the poem, but after staring at it for a few days I was ready to send it on to others and let them find the problem. Christi pointed out that there was a lack of imagery. I reviewed my poem once more and realized that there was no imagery at all. I decided to first take Krista and Candice’s suggestions since there were only two. Krista suggested that I should move the line “only there when convenient” a few lines up. After reading the poem with the line in the original place and them once more with it moved, I decided that Krista’s suggestion really made a positive difference in the poem. Because it was placed under the line, “Nothing more than a mere memory,” it sounded like the memory was only there when convenient rather that the person. Candice suggested the change “mere” to “vague.” I chose to leave it as is because I wanted the “m” sound from the three m’s. After these changes, I began to add in some imagery, but as I added more lines in, I decided that one long poem did not work too well. I then began to divide the lines and create stanzas. Once it was divided, I realized that I had unintentionally placed five lines in each stanza. I moved around a few punctuation marks to give the poem more dramatic effect and then handed it over for another revision.

In the second round of revisions, my boyfriend was the most helpful. He pointed out that the imagery was not consistent. It went from water, knife, snake, and tomb. He suggested that I change snake to moccasin so it would be a type of water snake and would connect better to the first image of water. Once I changed this, I immediately changed it back to snake because it made the stanza awkward. I studied the imagery for a long while before I realized the imagery did have a connection. Water crashes, knives slice, snakes crush, and a tomb equals death. I decided that crashes, slices, and crushes are all actions that lead to a person’s death. The “unwanted soul” didn’t seem to fit with the tomb image. I changed “unwanted” to “unbeloved” because you often find the word “beloved” written on tombs and if this person was never noticed or appreciated then she was clearly unbeloved. I was finally able to move past the imagery and begin focusing on the lines. Stephen mentioned that the first and second line were confusing. “Always helping others- ensuring happiness,” sounded as if I was ensuring my own happiness rather than theirs. I added “their” between “ensuring” and “happiness” to make a clear distinction of which party was the happy one. Then he brought the first and last lines to my attention. The first two lines were positive and the last two lines were negative. Because the whole poem is dark with no positive aspects, I decided it was best to keep the poem consistent by changing the first two lines and giving it a more negative tone. I changed “always helping others” to “sacrificing for others.” This connected “sacrifice” and “tomb” because the first idea I receive when I think about sacrifice is human sacrifice which leads to death. Finally, we were down to the title which I was not happy with. It sounded too cliché. I changed it from “Murdered Soul” to “Forgotten” because after a tomb sits there long enough, that grave essentially becomes forgotten. The whole idea behind the poem was a person who is never noticed and only used. If that person lived an unnoticeable life, then it is definite that her grave will be unnoticed as well.

I do not feel that the poem is complete. It needs more description of how this person ended up in this situation and why. I tried placing those details, as Christi had suggested, but everything I wrote felt too forced. I felt this poem was ready for final submission and in the future I can add more once the feeling is right. I do not believe this will ever be a published poem. As I mentioned before, poetry is not one of my strengths. This experience has taught me a lot about poetry and has helped me to appreciate it more.