Looking over the common themes of all the poems I have written so far the key word that would pop out to me would be nostalgia. There tends to be a lean towards the idea of remembering times past as well as the theme of time itself. To be honest I am not sure why these themes come up, I guess I just long for those old days I guess…Another theme is the idea of self-sacrifice, that also comes up a bunch as well. This could just be self-actualizing I guess. Sail vs Steam, The Lonely Sailor, and Fishing sort of portray these emotions I believe. But to be fair I think those have more to do with the fear of being solo than anything else. Poems are an interesting art form because the artist is sort of in a never-ending therapy session with themselves. Always spilling but never attaching their name to it
When looking over all my poems I feel like they can all connect with the theme of letting go- whether it is actually about letting something go or not being able to. When I am writing these poems, I notice that I am more likely to write about the loss of someone when it is freewrite, but when there are prompts it can wander into mental health topics, letting go as in feeling relieved, but then I even have one poem that sticks out that is about war. I often try to make every poem I write short, but with a powerful meaning behind it. I think that my poems “to the boy who was never mine:,” “The Same Sky,” “knotted heart,” and “facade” all connect and have this similar theme of struggling to let go of something, specifically someone. In all of these poems, I have been questioned, “who is this about?” because it is about a person, but only to my knowledge they are about the same person. I think whats really pushing me to write these similar themes in my poems is that when I do sit down to write, it is like a therapy session, like Ben said actually, a never-ending therapy session with yourself. I think even with the free write in the beginning of class, I have naturally came up with poems (that need work of course) about the same themes as the poems that were actually written for this class. Writing poetry is so therapeutic in this way, and I think the themes that can be found also depend on the reader’s perspective, but I think what can be clearly seen is this theme of letting go, loss, and using things such as the ocean or the sky to help get a point across thats different.
As I look over the poems I have written so far this semester, I am definitely noticing some themes of seasonal change, and this is not unexpected to me. I have always found something so creative and inspiring when it comes to the change and forces of nature that despite happening every year – far before humans– we always find it provoking in a stubborn and wondrous way. Another area I found myself drawn to was more of a narrative storytelling aspect where I had instances of morning routines, driving, cooking, etc., and some of the descriptions seem to fall into this inner dialogue and questioning. I do utilize themes of nature and the ocean within my imagery as well, which I know is quite common – but I don’t think that makes my feelings toward those things and, thus, my poems any less important to me. I definitely feel a bit of an existentialist vibe within my poems – big human existence questions and observations and how to find meaning in how absurd life can be. For my 3-4 poems that I think fit well together, I am thinking of The Light Changes in May, Vienna by Moonlight, Season’s End, and Wanting. To me, these all share this theme of nature’s innate connection with humans, and they bring together moments of awakening, whether that is to the season’s change, the passage of time, or universal questions of how to be in this world.
Looking over my poems once again, I can see the common themes of mental walls as well as nature. I find that a lot of my metaphors and similes have to do with nature, while a good portion of my poems have to do with mental health. “will”, “reflection” and “can you repeat that” are the three that come to mind in terms of which ones ultimately work together. If these were to be the ones I would use for my artist book, I would likely go back and heavily revise them before hand. I also found that these are the ones with the least amount of structure as well, I wasn’t focusing on rhyming or metaphor, they are more raw and jumbled, but I also believe that that’s why I like them so much.
As I look at my poems, I notice that one of my most common themes is relationships, whether that be platonic, familial, or romantic. My other very common theme is influence from the literature I enjoy, whether that be television or books or music. My third secret stash poem and my drafty-draft poem are inspired by the same television series, and my first poem and my two free writes are all about a one-sided non-romantic relationship. I notice that I use unified metaphors often, and I use some form of violent action or a weapon to symbolize emotional pain or angst. My three to four poems that work well together are A Grave Lain With Twizzlers, The Ramblings of a Girl Who Isn’t Caitlin, I am a stained glass window, and No Lament For Ducklings, as they all carry the theme of an unbalanced relationship, and they all use some form of unified metaphor. However, for my artist book, I am curious about writing a new set of poems that have a more narrative tie between them, as these four poems, while connected, are not a perfect correspondence, and I love telling a story in particular.
A theme I recognize from my poems so far is that a lot of them are written describing some deeply hidden feelings and emotions.A lot of the free poems I write also describe LGBTQ+ themes as well. I think the following poems from my “Poems in Progress” page can be grouped together: To be Perceived, “Joy”, OOTD, Fix Me, and Secret Stash #1 (untitled). I think each of these poems hit a very specific part of the brain and discuss very specific emotions. However, I think within all the poems there is an underlying theme of anxiety to push the described emotions forward. Writing these poems has turned into a form of therapy for me. It’s really amazing to get out those thoughts in a creative way and I love searching for the right words to convey the ideas I have. I love writing these poems and even though the wording may not always be right, the ideas/feelings/emotions behind them are very real and important to me.
The vast majority of the poems that I have composed have been about sensitive topics, death being the central theme. I have a hard time accessing my emotional creativity, and just letting those juices flow, so I often resort to the deepest parts of my conscience to produce meaningful material. As I look through these poems, I get a bunch of weird feelings. I really believe that I go for the most feeling-dense topics when I have the freedom to do so. The most recent poem that I wrote, which was the Anniversary poem, was full of deep feelings that I have for my girlfriend. At the end of that poem, I mentioned that idea of “forever,” which is a topic that includes the idea of death, at least for me. The poem where we looked at the library’s archives was directly related to the concept of death, as I interpreted the picture of shadowy figures as fading from this plane of existence. As I go through my other poems, I am getting more of a sense of the passage of time and the true values that I have about life. In these poems, I speak about things that I enjoy, dislike, and cherish, all with the underlying theme of the possibility that all of this can end in mind.
I think that one of the free poems that I wrote about shopping, the anniversary poem, the “a picture is worth a trillion dollars” poem and the poem from my artist book all go hand in hand. They at least connect on their philosophical theme as I see it. When I think back to when I was writing some of these, I remember the feelings I had, and they were all more or less the same. This will be thought about and fleshed out more once I have the time to compile all of the poems into one place and look at them more collectively.
I’d definitely say a main theme that keeps popping up in my poetry is my family and friends. I write a lot about my relationships with them and how they impact me in both good and bad ways. I think I tend to focus on the negative aspects of my family life. I think this is because I don’t have any other outlet to talk about them. But in that respect my Poetry Exercise 2 and my Everyday Poem number 7 go together. In the aspect of my friends my Poetry Exercise 1, my Everyday Poem 2, 5, and 8. A majority of these poems have been about the positive relationship I have with the people around me. Either way though the people in my life have a very clear impact on what I write and view as important enough to talk about. I was a bit worried when I heard this prompt that my poems weren’t going to have a main theme as I hadn’t been writing them with a main theme in mind. I thought I was going to struggle to answer this but I was surprised to see that a big majority of them were more intertwined than I thought.
As I look back at the poems I have so far, the biggest themes I can draw from 3-4 of them is adolescence and family. Most of my poems talk about conversations or experiences I’ve had with my family. Outside of this collection, my other work bounces across topics of love, anger, and rejection. I feel that two of my poems, “Seasons and Reasons” and “Marked”, are most connected in subject and idea. In different ways they both show me, as the author, reflecting on aspects of my childhood. Where one goes a more negative route, the other is a positive uplift. I particularly want to expand on the idea I created within “Seasons and Reasons”. Framed from some adolescent romantic advice my dad gave me, I chose to connect such to my now adult love life. Going further in the process I would like to see if I could make other poems about advice I’ve received. Then write poems that reflect on the advice itself and how such advice applies to my life now. I could continue with this theme by only choosing advice from family, but spoke to various parts of life. Or, go the opposite way and focus only on romantic or love advice.
Looking at my ten poems over the course of the semester, I have noticed that they get shorter as time goes on. This is not a linear pattern, but it appears overall. I think this is because I am learning how to be more careful and precise with my word choices as I focus on what I really want the poem to say. The drafty draft poem was good practice for doing this–even if I think it’s done, there is probably some revisions I can still make to be more precise. The more recent poems I have written are maybe two stanzas on average, and my first poems were many stanzas long, which reflects more precise word choice, but also the narrowing in on ideas.
I have also noticed a theme of nature across some of these poems, either largely, or just appearing in a few words. My favorite poem that I have written is my drafty draft, which is largely about nature. Not all of my poems include this, but it seems like the overriding one. Another theme that I have noticed throughout my poems is sort of “coming of age”, or development of self. My first poem was very much about coming of age (and long). My living in metaphor poem was about a part of me that smiles through mistakes, but used ballet, which is something that I grew up doing from childhood through adolescence, and some in college. Another theme I have written about often is love and relationships.
My anniversary poem and rhyme poem are very similar as they both use autumn leaves as imagery and have to do with letting go, but they are about different situations. One of my free poems uses ocean imagery, and both those free poems and the rhyme are about the same person. My drafty draft also fits in here with the colors and descriptions of nature. My picture is worth a trillion dollar$ poem is pretty similar to the drafty draft that they both talk about people’s relationship with nature.
As I’m writing a review of the past ten in class poems, I can’t help but feel a sense of loss is a common factor amongst my writings. I think that loss and longing and this long, unforgiving toll that was my life in New Jersey has been the price I’ve paid to get where I am today, and this is all apparent in my writing. And it’s not just poetry, I feel that what I went through for eighteen years has bleed through and onto any kind of paper I’ve had the gift of touching. Paper and souls are very similar in that regard, I think being able to connect to people over different mediums is important because of that. A few poems where I’ve glossed over hardships that have seemingly seeped into each other and strum themselves together would have to be all of them, though. My poems have reflected my life, separate but intertwining streams of consciousness, so of course my being is the common theme. But as a more direct, overarching one, I would say that there is an unsettling anger in a lot of my earlier writings that I haven’t come to terms with yet. I think I’ve been angry and unheard for a very long time, and I’ve always expressed it through my writing. This is seen in my first poem, “The Summer”, when I felt all my friends had left me up in Maine alone; and while I visited everyone else multiple times, I was left up here alone. This mindset moves into “The Listener”, my second poem, when I’d felt fed up with not being heard or understood yet was always the one everyone else relied on. This feeling moved into my poem “The Moon” where I’d talked of how I felt unheard, again. In my poem “Mother”, this feeling of being unheard then transitions back to an angry grudge as I write of my relationship with the house I grew up in and how my mother has never been able to take care of herself or her children.
I think there are three very clear themes that emerge from the poems: longing, spite, and a little bit of melancholic self-loathing. I’ll go over spite first, because it feels like the most common out of all of them, mostly at the beginning. Poems like “True, ‘True’, (True)”, “Not an Ode”, and “Hope you Choke” all fall under these categories. they’re all directed at someone in the past and are more therapeutic than anything for me to write. They’re all spiteful, mildly malicious, and built off of (negative) experiences with the person that I remembered. (I won’t get into it too much because it’s private but I digress.) The second theme I’ve seen is a generalized feeling of longing. The poems in this category are “And Then There’s Me”, “Kiss”, “Denouement”, and “Subject to Change”. “And Then There’s Me” only fit’s partially because it feels like a generalized longing for freedom from society (or just feeling trapped somehow in society), but the rest of them are more longing for romantic connection. “Kiss” and “Denouement” especially delve into loneliness (not that “Subject to Change” doesn’t but these to specifically do it a lot), while “Denouement” and “Subject to Change” go into missed opportunities or un-pursued romantic connections. This entry as a whole sounds significantly deeper than any of the poems probably actually are, just to be clear. As for the self-loathing, “Leech” and “Haze” both fit into this category. “Leech” more so, because “Haze” is kinda just a mellow, mildly sad way of going about life, and “Leech” is straight up saying that the writer of the poem (me) is a leech. Both, however, just feel sad, and demonstrate contradictory thoughts or ideas, like being there for a friend but feeling like you’re only doing it because you’re bored (in the case of “Leech”), or wanting to participate or contribute to a class but also praying that the teacher doesn’t call on you because then you’d have to go through the whole ordeal of speaking in front of the whole class (in the case of “Haze”).
12 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 6”
Looking over the common themes of all the poems I have written so far the key word that would pop out to me would be nostalgia. There tends to be a lean towards the idea of remembering times past as well as the theme of time itself. To be honest I am not sure why these themes come up, I guess I just long for those old days I guess…Another theme is the idea of self-sacrifice, that also comes up a bunch as well. This could just be self-actualizing I guess. Sail vs Steam, The Lonely Sailor, and Fishing sort of portray these emotions I believe. But to be fair I think those have more to do with the fear of being solo than anything else. Poems are an interesting art form because the artist is sort of in a never-ending therapy session with themselves. Always spilling but never attaching their name to it
When looking over all my poems I feel like they can all connect with the theme of letting go- whether it is actually about letting something go or not being able to. When I am writing these poems, I notice that I am more likely to write about the loss of someone when it is freewrite, but when there are prompts it can wander into mental health topics, letting go as in feeling relieved, but then I even have one poem that sticks out that is about war. I often try to make every poem I write short, but with a powerful meaning behind it. I think that my poems “to the boy who was never mine:,” “The Same Sky,” “knotted heart,” and “facade” all connect and have this similar theme of struggling to let go of something, specifically someone. In all of these poems, I have been questioned, “who is this about?” because it is about a person, but only to my knowledge they are about the same person. I think whats really pushing me to write these similar themes in my poems is that when I do sit down to write, it is like a therapy session, like Ben said actually, a never-ending therapy session with yourself. I think even with the free write in the beginning of class, I have naturally came up with poems (that need work of course) about the same themes as the poems that were actually written for this class. Writing poetry is so therapeutic in this way, and I think the themes that can be found also depend on the reader’s perspective, but I think what can be clearly seen is this theme of letting go, loss, and using things such as the ocean or the sky to help get a point across thats different.
As I look over the poems I have written so far this semester, I am definitely noticing some themes of seasonal change, and this is not unexpected to me. I have always found something so creative and inspiring when it comes to the change and forces of nature that despite happening every year – far before humans– we always find it provoking in a stubborn and wondrous way. Another area I found myself drawn to was more of a narrative storytelling aspect where I had instances of morning routines, driving, cooking, etc., and some of the descriptions seem to fall into this inner dialogue and questioning. I do utilize themes of nature and the ocean within my imagery as well, which I know is quite common – but I don’t think that makes my feelings toward those things and, thus, my poems any less important to me. I definitely feel a bit of an existentialist vibe within my poems – big human existence questions and observations and how to find meaning in how absurd life can be. For my 3-4 poems that I think fit well together, I am thinking of The Light Changes in May, Vienna by Moonlight, Season’s End, and Wanting. To me, these all share this theme of nature’s innate connection with humans, and they bring together moments of awakening, whether that is to the season’s change, the passage of time, or universal questions of how to be in this world.
Looking over my poems once again, I can see the common themes of mental walls as well as nature. I find that a lot of my metaphors and similes have to do with nature, while a good portion of my poems have to do with mental health. “will”, “reflection” and “can you repeat that” are the three that come to mind in terms of which ones ultimately work together. If these were to be the ones I would use for my artist book, I would likely go back and heavily revise them before hand. I also found that these are the ones with the least amount of structure as well, I wasn’t focusing on rhyming or metaphor, they are more raw and jumbled, but I also believe that that’s why I like them so much.
As I look at my poems, I notice that one of my most common themes is relationships, whether that be platonic, familial, or romantic. My other very common theme is influence from the literature I enjoy, whether that be television or books or music. My third secret stash poem and my drafty-draft poem are inspired by the same television series, and my first poem and my two free writes are all about a one-sided non-romantic relationship. I notice that I use unified metaphors often, and I use some form of violent action or a weapon to symbolize emotional pain or angst. My three to four poems that work well together are A Grave Lain With Twizzlers, The Ramblings of a Girl Who Isn’t Caitlin, I am a stained glass window, and No Lament For Ducklings, as they all carry the theme of an unbalanced relationship, and they all use some form of unified metaphor. However, for my artist book, I am curious about writing a new set of poems that have a more narrative tie between them, as these four poems, while connected, are not a perfect correspondence, and I love telling a story in particular.
A theme I recognize from my poems so far is that a lot of them are written describing some deeply hidden feelings and emotions.A lot of the free poems I write also describe LGBTQ+ themes as well. I think the following poems from my “Poems in Progress” page can be grouped together: To be Perceived, “Joy”, OOTD, Fix Me, and Secret Stash #1 (untitled). I think each of these poems hit a very specific part of the brain and discuss very specific emotions. However, I think within all the poems there is an underlying theme of anxiety to push the described emotions forward. Writing these poems has turned into a form of therapy for me. It’s really amazing to get out those thoughts in a creative way and I love searching for the right words to convey the ideas I have. I love writing these poems and even though the wording may not always be right, the ideas/feelings/emotions behind them are very real and important to me.
The vast majority of the poems that I have composed have been about sensitive topics, death being the central theme. I have a hard time accessing my emotional creativity, and just letting those juices flow, so I often resort to the deepest parts of my conscience to produce meaningful material. As I look through these poems, I get a bunch of weird feelings. I really believe that I go for the most feeling-dense topics when I have the freedom to do so. The most recent poem that I wrote, which was the Anniversary poem, was full of deep feelings that I have for my girlfriend. At the end of that poem, I mentioned that idea of “forever,” which is a topic that includes the idea of death, at least for me. The poem where we looked at the library’s archives was directly related to the concept of death, as I interpreted the picture of shadowy figures as fading from this plane of existence. As I go through my other poems, I am getting more of a sense of the passage of time and the true values that I have about life. In these poems, I speak about things that I enjoy, dislike, and cherish, all with the underlying theme of the possibility that all of this can end in mind.
I think that one of the free poems that I wrote about shopping, the anniversary poem, the “a picture is worth a trillion dollars” poem and the poem from my artist book all go hand in hand. They at least connect on their philosophical theme as I see it. When I think back to when I was writing some of these, I remember the feelings I had, and they were all more or less the same. This will be thought about and fleshed out more once I have the time to compile all of the poems into one place and look at them more collectively.
I’d definitely say a main theme that keeps popping up in my poetry is my family and friends. I write a lot about my relationships with them and how they impact me in both good and bad ways. I think I tend to focus on the negative aspects of my family life. I think this is because I don’t have any other outlet to talk about them. But in that respect my Poetry Exercise 2 and my Everyday Poem number 7 go together. In the aspect of my friends my Poetry Exercise 1, my Everyday Poem 2, 5, and 8. A majority of these poems have been about the positive relationship I have with the people around me. Either way though the people in my life have a very clear impact on what I write and view as important enough to talk about. I was a bit worried when I heard this prompt that my poems weren’t going to have a main theme as I hadn’t been writing them with a main theme in mind. I thought I was going to struggle to answer this but I was surprised to see that a big majority of them were more intertwined than I thought.
As I look back at the poems I have so far, the biggest themes I can draw from 3-4 of them is adolescence and family. Most of my poems talk about conversations or experiences I’ve had with my family. Outside of this collection, my other work bounces across topics of love, anger, and rejection. I feel that two of my poems, “Seasons and Reasons” and “Marked”, are most connected in subject and idea. In different ways they both show me, as the author, reflecting on aspects of my childhood. Where one goes a more negative route, the other is a positive uplift. I particularly want to expand on the idea I created within “Seasons and Reasons”. Framed from some adolescent romantic advice my dad gave me, I chose to connect such to my now adult love life. Going further in the process I would like to see if I could make other poems about advice I’ve received. Then write poems that reflect on the advice itself and how such advice applies to my life now. I could continue with this theme by only choosing advice from family, but spoke to various parts of life. Or, go the opposite way and focus only on romantic or love advice.
Looking at my ten poems over the course of the semester, I have noticed that they get shorter as time goes on. This is not a linear pattern, but it appears overall. I think this is because I am learning how to be more careful and precise with my word choices as I focus on what I really want the poem to say. The drafty draft poem was good practice for doing this–even if I think it’s done, there is probably some revisions I can still make to be more precise. The more recent poems I have written are maybe two stanzas on average, and my first poems were many stanzas long, which reflects more precise word choice, but also the narrowing in on ideas.
I have also noticed a theme of nature across some of these poems, either largely, or just appearing in a few words. My favorite poem that I have written is my drafty draft, which is largely about nature. Not all of my poems include this, but it seems like the overriding one. Another theme that I have noticed throughout my poems is sort of “coming of age”, or development of self. My first poem was very much about coming of age (and long). My living in metaphor poem was about a part of me that smiles through mistakes, but used ballet, which is something that I grew up doing from childhood through adolescence, and some in college. Another theme I have written about often is love and relationships.
My anniversary poem and rhyme poem are very similar as they both use autumn leaves as imagery and have to do with letting go, but they are about different situations. One of my free poems uses ocean imagery, and both those free poems and the rhyme are about the same person. My drafty draft also fits in here with the colors and descriptions of nature. My picture is worth a trillion dollar$ poem is pretty similar to the drafty draft that they both talk about people’s relationship with nature.
As I’m writing a review of the past ten in class poems, I can’t help but feel a sense of loss is a common factor amongst my writings. I think that loss and longing and this long, unforgiving toll that was my life in New Jersey has been the price I’ve paid to get where I am today, and this is all apparent in my writing. And it’s not just poetry, I feel that what I went through for eighteen years has bleed through and onto any kind of paper I’ve had the gift of touching. Paper and souls are very similar in that regard, I think being able to connect to people over different mediums is important because of that. A few poems where I’ve glossed over hardships that have seemingly seeped into each other and strum themselves together would have to be all of them, though. My poems have reflected my life, separate but intertwining streams of consciousness, so of course my being is the common theme. But as a more direct, overarching one, I would say that there is an unsettling anger in a lot of my earlier writings that I haven’t come to terms with yet. I think I’ve been angry and unheard for a very long time, and I’ve always expressed it through my writing. This is seen in my first poem, “The Summer”, when I felt all my friends had left me up in Maine alone; and while I visited everyone else multiple times, I was left up here alone. This mindset moves into “The Listener”, my second poem, when I’d felt fed up with not being heard or understood yet was always the one everyone else relied on. This feeling moved into my poem “The Moon” where I’d talked of how I felt unheard, again. In my poem “Mother”, this feeling of being unheard then transitions back to an angry grudge as I write of my relationship with the house I grew up in and how my mother has never been able to take care of herself or her children.
I think there are three very clear themes that emerge from the poems: longing, spite, and a little bit of melancholic self-loathing. I’ll go over spite first, because it feels like the most common out of all of them, mostly at the beginning. Poems like “True, ‘True’, (True)”, “Not an Ode”, and “Hope you Choke” all fall under these categories. they’re all directed at someone in the past and are more therapeutic than anything for me to write. They’re all spiteful, mildly malicious, and built off of (negative) experiences with the person that I remembered. (I won’t get into it too much because it’s private but I digress.) The second theme I’ve seen is a generalized feeling of longing. The poems in this category are “And Then There’s Me”, “Kiss”, “Denouement”, and “Subject to Change”. “And Then There’s Me” only fit’s partially because it feels like a generalized longing for freedom from society (or just feeling trapped somehow in society), but the rest of them are more longing for romantic connection. “Kiss” and “Denouement” especially delve into loneliness (not that “Subject to Change” doesn’t but these to specifically do it a lot), while “Denouement” and “Subject to Change” go into missed opportunities or un-pursued romantic connections. This entry as a whole sounds significantly deeper than any of the poems probably actually are, just to be clear. As for the self-loathing, “Leech” and “Haze” both fit into this category. “Leech” more so, because “Haze” is kinda just a mellow, mildly sad way of going about life, and “Leech” is straight up saying that the writer of the poem (me) is a leech. Both, however, just feel sad, and demonstrate contradictory thoughts or ideas, like being there for a friend but feeling like you’re only doing it because you’re bored (in the case of “Leech”), or wanting to participate or contribute to a class but also praying that the teacher doesn’t call on you because then you’d have to go through the whole ordeal of speaking in front of the whole class (in the case of “Haze”).