Poetry
Artist Statement
This poem is important to me because this topic has always intrigued me and made me want to learn more about it. When we first started the Truth of War I found it really interesting, but then the project ended. When this poetry project was brought up I was excited to be able to write about whatever I wanted to if it had to do with something like war, peace, or violence. I was excited that the Truth of War project was basically happening again because it gave me the option to write about my feelings towards the entire act, connect more with my audience, and use a new writing style to express my opinion. I think that poetry really helped me because I was able to express my view on the act rather than in the first project when we had to write in one specific way and I didn’t feel like I was able to express my full opinion.
The points expressed within this poem to me are some of the most important that I have ever written because I have always felt extremely passionate about this project. I have always looked at war and seen no purpose to it, but I have never really had a good medium to write what my opinions are. I have been able to express it in other ways in other types of writing, but poetry has by far been the most important and has made the biggest difference in my mind. I just feel like I am actually writing in a way that I like and writing in a way that I think can get my point across in a much more focused way than other types of writing. This poem has given me the option to express my opinion in the best way that I possibly could have, there is no other way that would have been better.
The poem itself wasn’t inspired by a specific person or poem, it was just inspired by poetry that I have heard in the past and have liked. I can’t see anyone that the style is very reminiscent of but I still think that the style used was very useful for what I was trying to do. I tried to find someone that I liked the style of it, but I found that I couldn’t find one that I liked. I couldn’t find a style that I liked and wanted to model in some way, so I combined some others and wrote what I wanted to and used the style that I wanted to.
In my poem I used many different techniques when I was writing. One of the most important that I think I used was repetition. The repetition was important because in one part I repeat the same line of “the _ should be _ by all,” and I think that it was one of the most important parts of the poem because I feel like it drives home a point. For me, having repetition shows a point extremely well and I think that it always emphasizes the importance of a poem and helps the reader see the message of a poem. In this area specifically I made it extremely obvious what my perspective was, but even if I hadn’t I still think that it would have been clear because repetition makes it clear for me.
The points expressed within this poem to me are some of the most important that I have ever written because I have always felt extremely passionate about this project. I have always looked at war and seen no purpose to it, but I have never really had a good medium to write what my opinions are. I have been able to express it in other ways in other types of writing, but poetry has by far been the most important and has made the biggest difference in my mind. I just feel like I am actually writing in a way that I like and writing in a way that I think can get my point across in a much more focused way than other types of writing. This poem has given me the option to express my opinion in the best way that I possibly could have, there is no other way that would have been better.
The poem itself wasn’t inspired by a specific person or poem, it was just inspired by poetry that I have heard in the past and have liked. I can’t see anyone that the style is very reminiscent of but I still think that the style used was very useful for what I was trying to do. I tried to find someone that I liked the style of it, but I found that I couldn’t find one that I liked. I couldn’t find a style that I liked and wanted to model in some way, so I combined some others and wrote what I wanted to and used the style that I wanted to.
In my poem I used many different techniques when I was writing. One of the most important that I think I used was repetition. The repetition was important because in one part I repeat the same line of “the _ should be _ by all,” and I think that it was one of the most important parts of the poem because I feel like it drives home a point. For me, having repetition shows a point extremely well and I think that it always emphasizes the importance of a poem and helps the reader see the message of a poem. In this area specifically I made it extremely obvious what my perspective was, but even if I hadn’t I still think that it would have been clear because repetition makes it clear for me.
Poem
The stories that are told
Of passion and heroism
Can be true, but often the full truth is left out
Like a flower hidden in the shadow of a tree
The full truth can never fully be expressed
It’s a hidden truth covered by a pile of lies
The lies that are told in order to cover the truths
They have no purpose, no reason to exist
The war should be seen by all.
The truth should be heard by all.
The fallen should be mourned by all
The horrors should be experienced by all.
The effects on the soldiers should be known by all.
The pain,
In fact the pain the most,
Should be felt by all
It’s the detachment from reality that creates the biggest lie.
It all matters on some scale
It all affects us
The truths
The lies
The everything
It all matters
The past is important
The present is important
The future is important
It’s all important
The lessons learned
The lessons that will be learned
As humans we learn from memories
We cannot learn from something that has not happened.
Of passion and heroism
Can be true, but often the full truth is left out
Like a flower hidden in the shadow of a tree
The full truth can never fully be expressed
It’s a hidden truth covered by a pile of lies
The lies that are told in order to cover the truths
They have no purpose, no reason to exist
The war should be seen by all.
The truth should be heard by all.
The fallen should be mourned by all
The horrors should be experienced by all.
The effects on the soldiers should be known by all.
The pain,
In fact the pain the most,
Should be felt by all
It’s the detachment from reality that creates the biggest lie.
It all matters on some scale
It all affects us
The truths
The lies
The everything
It all matters
The past is important
The present is important
The future is important
It’s all important
The lessons learned
The lessons that will be learned
As humans we learn from memories
We cannot learn from something that has not happened.
Growth As a Poet
In the first draft of my poem there wasn’t really a very clear perspective to it. It was jumping all over the place and it ended with the reader not being very sure about what they had just read. This was the biggest critique that I had by every student, so this was the first thing that I did. The poem started out as a three and a half page poem that was very unclear, but it ended as a one and a half page poem that was focused. When I started writing my poem I just wrote down everything that came to my mind, so logically it shouldn’t have made much sense. After revising my poem and having over five drafts of it, it seemed like something that was more professional to me. It sounded more fluent and clear than the first drafts that I had; I finally had something to be proud of. From here I continued to refine it until I had what I finally wanted.
One of the largest changes that I have had to make is in the second stanza the repetition in the first draft wasn’t as strong or as prevalent. There were six lines of it just like in the final draft, but they were weak and not all of them related to each other. The lines were also put in the middle of a stanza in the first draft so they looked weird in the place that they were at. One line that was changed was “The effects should be known by all.” I changed this line because one of the things that was told to me frequently during the critiques was that for that stanza I should make the lines continue to get longer so that it looked like stairs descending. This line was the last line so I either needed to change the length or I needed to make it longer, so I changed it to “The effects on the soldiers should be known by all.” Making this change makes this line in particular more specific and the specificity of the lines help the poem create a more concrete overall message.
Another change that I made to my poem that I think helped the poem was removing entire stanzas that had nothing to do with the overall message that I was going for. I really wanted to make my poem short but still have a powerful message that wasn't covered by other unrelated topics. One way that I did this was to remove unneeded stanzas, such as the stanza that started as, “The past is important,” and took three lines from it, which were, “It is all important, The lessons learned, The lessons that will be learned,” and removed the rest, which made no sense in context with the rest of the poem. I think that removing these three lines from the poem helped create more solid overall message to the poem and I think that that helps create an overall better poem for the audience to listen to or read.
In the first draft of this poem I kept bouncing between two different unrelated topics because at the time that is what seemed like it would work for what I wanted to accomplish, but as I learned that was not the case. It was very confusing to have more than one message happening at one time, at least in the way that I was writing it. This was another one of the most common critiques that I was getting during the all class critique. This was happening throughout the entire poem. In the beginning of the poem I was talking about how we will never know what it is truly like to be a soldier, that we will never experience what they do and therefor shouldn’t act like we do, but later on in the poem I was talking about lessons in war and that we need to learn from them. These two topics were put together in a very clashing way and it just sounded like something that was written by someone who didn’t know how to write in general. I now see that I should have just focused on one topic, but as I was writing it all seemed like it flowed and made sense. After I removed the second topic and only focused on the us learning from war I think that the poem overall made a lot more sense and it sounded more professional.
One of the largest changes that I have had to make is in the second stanza the repetition in the first draft wasn’t as strong or as prevalent. There were six lines of it just like in the final draft, but they were weak and not all of them related to each other. The lines were also put in the middle of a stanza in the first draft so they looked weird in the place that they were at. One line that was changed was “The effects should be known by all.” I changed this line because one of the things that was told to me frequently during the critiques was that for that stanza I should make the lines continue to get longer so that it looked like stairs descending. This line was the last line so I either needed to change the length or I needed to make it longer, so I changed it to “The effects on the soldiers should be known by all.” Making this change makes this line in particular more specific and the specificity of the lines help the poem create a more concrete overall message.
Another change that I made to my poem that I think helped the poem was removing entire stanzas that had nothing to do with the overall message that I was going for. I really wanted to make my poem short but still have a powerful message that wasn't covered by other unrelated topics. One way that I did this was to remove unneeded stanzas, such as the stanza that started as, “The past is important,” and took three lines from it, which were, “It is all important, The lessons learned, The lessons that will be learned,” and removed the rest, which made no sense in context with the rest of the poem. I think that removing these three lines from the poem helped create more solid overall message to the poem and I think that that helps create an overall better poem for the audience to listen to or read.
In the first draft of this poem I kept bouncing between two different unrelated topics because at the time that is what seemed like it would work for what I wanted to accomplish, but as I learned that was not the case. It was very confusing to have more than one message happening at one time, at least in the way that I was writing it. This was another one of the most common critiques that I was getting during the all class critique. This was happening throughout the entire poem. In the beginning of the poem I was talking about how we will never know what it is truly like to be a soldier, that we will never experience what they do and therefor shouldn’t act like we do, but later on in the poem I was talking about lessons in war and that we need to learn from them. These two topics were put together in a very clashing way and it just sounded like something that was written by someone who didn’t know how to write in general. I now see that I should have just focused on one topic, but as I was writing it all seemed like it flowed and made sense. After I removed the second topic and only focused on the us learning from war I think that the poem overall made a lot more sense and it sounded more professional.