Emily Wieser Growth as a Poet Throughout the timeline of learning, analyzing, and developing my own perspective on poetry and

how to convey it, its come to my attention that my growth strictly pertains to the poets process itself. My writing, as it seems to be in the final draft of my poem, is very similar in style compared to my first and second drafts. With my first draft, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to convey, yet there was no source of inspiration. My topic was originally power and peace. I wanted to combine the two, yet I had no clear idea of how I could convey my message to the audience. I wanted to at least have a rough draft though. So I attempted to write down, in rhyme scheme, all the images of peace and power that came into my mind, and that related to the message I wanted to present. The problem was that the rest of the poem consisted of images that I personally associated with power, and did not connect with what I was trying to say. I soon realized that I was forcing my creative and poetic writing process, and that subject, (power mainly), was a topic that I hadnt gotten a personal grasp of yet. So I changed the subject to truth, which was something that I felt more passionate about, and immediately after that inspiration flowed to me. I was able to develop a clear and understandable meaning within my poem. That also meant completely rewriting my poem. Yet having the realization that power was something I could not personally connect with, and could therefore not write a truthful poem about, was a significant part of the process in how I was able to create a more coherent and sophisticated poem. The process that I, as a poet, went through within this project can be simplified down to the fact that without the proper inspiration, stimulation, and passion I am not able to engage my audience and myself in meaningful poetry. Forcing myself to write poetry about a topic that I am not personally engaged with results in creative failure. Not only is inspiration involved in the development of my growth as a poet, but also my new understanding that to create revolutionary poetry you must not only have an understanding of the message from an emotional standpoint, but also from a philosophical, analytical, critical, and spiritual standpoint as well. The biggest shift from my earlier drafts to my final poem is the fact that I changed the subject I was talking about, yet still incorporated main key points that were in both poems. Originally I was going to write a poem about power, yet as I explain in my first paragraph of this reflection, I was unable to find any inspiration, so I switched my subject to truth. Yet I still wanted to incorporate the idea that chaos plays a large part in how we perceive the world, and therefore how we perceive our individual truths. For example the message of my first poem, although highly unclear, was represented in the first two stanzas: Defining power in the modern day is as tricky as identifying evil. What peoples faces say, mouths screaming for upheaval. Yet what if we just let go, of the control and of the fear? Would power then be the foe? Where the horizon is bright and clear. I explain the reasons for me changing my subject completely above, as I said before. Yet there are still some key points that I incorporated which I will discuss in later paragraphs.

This improved the whole appearance, message, and idea of the poem itself. Rewriting the poem and changing the subject gave me the ability to express my ideas and thoughts in a more revised way, and definitely a redefined way. With this came a certain type of engagement from both the poet and the audience. The second change I made in my poem is the rhyme scheme. Within the first drafts of the poem, I tried to incorporate a rhyme scheme, yet as I rewrote my poem I abandoned the idea of both conveying a message clearly while trying to rhyme everything. You can see this in one of my stanzas from the first draft: The crashing waves break upon a ragged shore, of rocks sharp and covered in salt. Hear the cry and see the seagull soar, above the tides that never halt. Now to help maintain a clear message throughout the entirety of my revised and rewritten poem, I took away the rhyme scheme and it became much easier to write and develop the meaning. Here is an example of the final draft: We are pioneers of truth. Unbound from the collective will. Sailing on the winds of discontent. Looking to discover what? Before, I was concentrating quite a bit on the rhyme scheme and not the actual poem itself. This made for lousy vocabulary. It also made it a little cheesy. This change mostly involves the style of writing I used to represent my poetry and my ideas. With removing the rhyme scheme, a new level of clarity was revealed when the final draft was completed.