Natalie Walker

Who Knew? 

                                     Who knew this day would come so soon?

                                     The absence of you has left me confused.

                                     Who knew this would affect me so.

                                     Who knew I had so many tears to shed.

                                     Building up inside, a river

                                     Behind a dam ready to burst.

                                    Who knew I would be so broken hearted,

                                    At having to say goodbye. Wondering why

                                    It had to be.

                                    Angry that he was gone, never to return.

                                    Who knew that I cared as much

                                    As I do. Who knew – not me.

                                    But now, I do.

                                    Though I wish, instead of knowing, he was

                                    Here and I knew nothing.  

Revision Account

My Struggles with poetry

            When I was trying to come up with an idea for my poem it was very hard for me because I had no idea what to write about. Finally inspiration struck, I have been really upset over Michael Jackson’s death and the poem basically spilled out of me. However it took me several tries to compose a poem that adequately expressed how I was feeling. The first draft that I wrote was basically to get it on paper before I forgot the general wording that I wanted to have in the poem. Afterwards, I reworked it again to give the poem more depth and expression to the original thoughts. Three drafts later I gave my poem to Dr. Gorman and Tara McGhee. Dr. Gorman advised me in line 2 to change “your” to “you” and did take that advice. Also in line 4 he suggested that I take the “Who” off of the end and put it at the beginning of line 5. Line 10 he thought it might be wise if I added a more definite phrase in the place of “it” and suggested “this parting”. I did try the poem with that suggestion but found that I did not like the way the poem sounded when I added that phrase. I tried a variation of “this parting” but nothing sounded right so I decided to leave the line as is. Line 13 he suggested that I add a dash in between “knew” and “not” because that would add a beat and make it feel more like speech. This suggestion I tried, I liked the sound much better and decided to keep that suggestion. As a last suggestion he said in line 15 I might try chopping the “Although” to “Though” to get a cleaner rhythm, I tried his suggestion and he was right the rhythm was cleaner and so I kept that in the final draft of the poem.

            Tara’s suggestions were a bit similar, she also suggested I reword the beginning of the poem and I followed her and Dr. Gorman’s suggestion by taking out “your presence” that seemed to clean up the sound and rhythm. At Line 13 she suggested that I separate that into two lines and I decided to follow her suggestion. It seemed to reinforce the pause in the poem making the end more meaningful or dramatic. The last two lines she thought needed to be reworked because she did not like the way they sounded however, I did not change them because I was quite pleased with the way the poem ended. It doesn’t end in a conventional way and I think that is what turned her off but that is what I like about it. So after taking into account both Tara’s and Dr. Gorman’s remarks I think they have both helped me to fine tune my poem into something that can be an enjoyable reading experience.