This Winter Day - Poem Imagery Rewrite

 

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 change a mood; it can change the entire meaning of a poem or a story.

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