Mikaela's Creative Writing Blog ❤️

  “The Afterlife” by Maurya Simon is an interesting poem that expresses the journey of a soul as it leaves and detaches from its physical body. The poem is filled with a lot of metaphors to describe this process, which makes sense given that the topic is about death. The opening line about a “hover-craft heavily straining against/ Gravity” creates a scene of a soul that is struggling to leave. It made me think about that “gravity” is also the problems that hold a soul to the body due to untied issues. I think this line also implies that letting go is not an easy thing to do. Overall, It is an interesting metaphor and definitely sets up a heavy tone for the poem. Another interesting Metaphor is, “my soul floats upward from the swirl of sheets.” I think what the poet was getting at was that the soul is rising, but the swirl of sheets makes it difficult for the soul to leave entirely, because people need comfort, and people can be comforting. Moreover, something that this line from ...

  “Buffalo Bill’s” by E.E. Cummings, uses sound to convey the rapid pace of Buffalo Bill’s life and just how inevitable death is. One of the most interesting ways that Cummings accelerates the reader to this conclusion is the unexpected way in how they space and break the lines within the poem. The swift alliteration of words like “oneworththreefourfive” is almost like the fast clack of a gunshot; something Buffalo Bill is known for. Another sound that Cummings uses, “a watersmooth-silver stallion” is quite smooth, like riding a horse out west which is a clever use of alliteration. One of the things that stood out to me in the poem was the pause when “Jesus” was mentioned. I think that this is when the poem turns and goes from the fun and chaos of life to the shift that death is inevitable, and it shifts the entire mood of the poem. “misterdeath” is so gloomy and dread-filled, even the lack of punctuation is telling. Punctuation doesn’t matter in death; so, the inevitable end of th...

  This Winter Day Imagery Rewrite Original poem by Maya Angelou   The kitchen is empty Canned greenies with old orange things Cling their roots into the cupboard Silent, thick fog clings to my nose then ends   I think that it was difficult to change the image of the poem. The original poem was very warm, kind of a slice of life about a kitchen. I really wanted to change the poem into something emptier. I wanted to change the mood of the kitchen to make it more alone because how the poem was originally written, it felt alive. I did this by using words that are associated with isolated places, like a cupboard. One of the challenges was finding the right words to show abandonment, especially for a kitchen where the original poem never really brings up people, just objects. I’ll be honest, at the beginning of this class, I didn’t really understand what imagery was. Now that I must use imagery to change the mood of something, I think I get it. Imagery can chang...

  The poem I chose to analyze was “Winter Ocean”, by John Updike. When I first read the poem, it made me think of a commercial that you would here to advertise some sort of travel; but if the traveling was on a 1800s whaling vessel that had to fight whales for their lantern oil. I've always thought those old fisherman stories where interesting, because they paint the ocean like it's a portal to fight water demons! That's why this poem is really interesting to me. Though this poem is short, it is complex. It’s quite free form and doesn’t adhere to a metric pattern. For instance, Updike uses verbiage such as “Portly pusher of waves, wind-slave,” though the rhymes are not consistent with the rest of the poem. Furthermore, Updike uses strong and heavy imagery that is layered in its meanings. I think the poem is about the sea and how rough it can be. On the surface, the poem looks innocent, but when you read deep into it, it’s very harsh, almost like a paradox of two completely ...