Original Poem Commentary
"7a.m." and "These Days"
When I think of writing poetry I think of a really thoughtful process and deep immersion into whatever kind of object or phenomenon or idea or egg salad sandwich you are writing about. But for some strange reason, that is only what comes to mind when I think of other people writing poetry. When I think of me, myself and I writing poetry, I think of getting an idea in my mind and simply filling in the empty spaces with words that I think look good when written in some particular fashion. Now, this isn’t necessarily how I feel about writing all of my poems, because I do have some that I really try to put meaning into, but to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I will give you examples of both types of my “writing style”.
“7a.m.”-
This poem is really quite self explanatory. It was written at 7a.m., well not exactly but it was around 7:30 or 7:40 in the morning and “7a.m.” sounded quite a bit better than that. The first line is “frozen fingers” and this is where I got the idea for the whole poem, because it was a very cold morning and my fingers were freezing. In the next couple of lines, “turning almost as numb as I wish to be on the inside” I just so happened to use a completely accidental simile, which made me feel like a little bit of a genius when I figured out the requirements for this poetry portfolio(I wrote the poem before I even knew about this assignment). Also within those two lines I mention wanting to be numb on the inside, which I don’t relate to very personally, but I have heard from alot of teenagers (online and in movies, but still) and I thought it sounded like I knew what I was talking about when i wrote it, which I liked. The last few lines continue on with: “grasping without feeling, for what my mind knows is absent” and these lines i chose without very much thought put into detail or meaning, I just decided that I liked the way that it all flowed together so I stuck with it.
“These Days”-
The day that I wrote this poem, I had been talking to one of my friends about life and how everything in life was going including school,and mental and emotional health, and I said “These days there just isn’t a whole lot for me to be happy about.” and I couldn’t get that phrase out of my head for the rest of the day, so I started writing that very idea. The first little part of the poem is: “these days it almost feels as if i have less and less to be happy about” who. would. have. guessed. The poem is split up into 5 different stanzas which are pretty much just supposed to be representing what has been happening and what I have been thinking as of late, hence the title, “these days”. The first stanza as I previously stated, is focussing in on the topic of joy and happiness, and my seemingly lack of it these days. The second stanza (or paragraph) is an attempt at adding rhythm to the poem that is already lacking lustre, while the third delves into the future in all of its ominous glory. The fourth stanza is on the topic of fading away slowly and silently and I really tried to compare that to the way I live everyday life, quietly with little impact on others around me. And the fifth and last stanza was basically restating old ideas using new words to tie the whole poem together with a neat little bow.
