When I look back at this semester and the work I have done, I noticed a trend with the poems that I have written, and that is they are a mixture of melancholy relatability and dealing with mental hurdles, but also a mixture of psychological horror and other elements of horror. I really put a lot of myself in these poems, but also let my love for the horror genre pour through. It culminated in a mixture and combination of real-life horror homages that also caused me to really put myself on the paper. With that being said, the Core 4 poems that I chose were the ones I chose because I wanted to reflect and show the type of writing that I do in this class, and I used these 4 poems as an example to show the reflection and vulnerability that I pour into these poems. My first and last ones are very personable poems that reflect on my journey as a person, as well as my journey as a writer who has a passion for the field. These two poems really show who I am and I wanted the rest of the class to experience my life first hand. The other two are reflection of my love of the horror genre. “Neon” is dedicated entirely to a horror movie from this decade that talks about depression and finding yourself, even if the person you find is the weirdest person on the planet to other people. “Voices” is based on the idea of psychological horror, mixed with the mental confidence issues I have had in the past. These two show that horror is a very subjective genre, and allows me to express my ideas and knowledge of the field in more ways than one. When it came to revision, my colleagues believed that all 4 of my poems were incredibly well written, so it was down to the smallest of details. I wanted to change the way some lines looked and changed some word choices around to help the poems flow better, and after reading them out loud, I do think I made the correct decision. Furthermore, my first poem started out as a rhyming poem that did not seem genuine enough. I think as I went on in class and got comfortable with the methods we used, I was able to turn that poem into a genuine reflection and it just seemed to flow a lot more. Flow and words were my biggest things, and I for one am beyond proud of the work I did this semester.
For my first poem, I wanted to reflect on something that is a consistent battle in my life: laundry. I compared it to a reset of my life and how I do enjoy the chore sometimes. Throughout my revision, I played with reshaping the structure, adapting the imagery like peeked and overflowed. By the end, it’s clear that doing laundry is a metaphor for resetting my life for the next week. My second poem is about a pond I grew up on during the summers. My revisions focused on enhancing the imagery to see how it can convey the tone of nostalgia and playing with the line structure, making it shorter. This is one of my favorite poems because I feel teleported to the location. My third poem was revised to focus on strengthening the imagery, changing the pronouns and adjectives, and attempting to clarify some of the vagueness in the piece. I also tried to be aware of the connotations, changing Alps to mountains, which helps shape the imagery that the location is the sea and mountains. When this was reviewed in class, some lines landed well and were understood, while others did not. I think it was a difficult revision process because I wanted to be vague, but needed to do it in the right places. My last poem had a bird theme, so I developed the language by using words like spiraling and clipped. I also worked on line structure to give some lines more of a punch, along with changing the language so the story being told is clearer.
I chose these four poems—Caravaggio, New York, New York, House of Green, and Aurora of Memory—because each one represents a different part of who I am: my passions, my experiences, my childhood, and the memories that continue to shape me. Together, they form a small map of the places, images, and emotions that inspire my writing.
1st Poem (The Fortune Teller): I picked this poem because art is a huge part of my life. I often travel specifically to visit art museums, and I keep a personal collection of poems sparked by the paintings, sculptures, and photographs I encounter. Caravaggio is part of this collection, which I call Art Lover’s Eye. When revising it, I focused on clarifying the dialogue by putting all spoken lines in italics and fixing the grammatical errors that distracted from the poem’s tone and imagery. This piece reflects my relationship with art and how deeply museums influence my creativity.
2nd Poem (New York, New York): I selected this poem because New York has always fascinated me. Although I’ve visited the city multiple times and love its energy and cultures, the photograph I chose from UNE’s online collection (the dreary, grey streets of New York in the early 1900s) showed me a completely different version of the place I know. That contrast inspired the poem. While revising, I italicized the final “new york, new york” to emphasize it as both a title and a closing echo, and adjusted sentence structures and word choices to create a smoother, more rhythmic flow.
3rd Poem (House of Green): This poem is rooted in my childhood and my mother’s green thumb. I grew up in a home that slowly transformed into a jungle of plants, surrounded by 25 acres of woods in Northern Maine. With the doors and windows always open, nature was part of our everyday lives. The poem is dedicated to that connection; to my mother’s care for her plants and the environment I grew up in. Revision for this piece was minimal: I added a few rhyming words for sonic texture and separated some stanzas to create a more intentional structural rhythm.
4th Poem (Aurora of Memory): This final poem came from a prompt about writing in connection with a movie. I chose the scene in Black Panther where T’Challa enters the spirit realm and speaks with his father, because it reminded me of losing my great grandmother when I was young. My mother always tells stories about how close we were and how I used to “see” and talk to her after she passed. I remember having pretend tea parties with her using a tea set that has been passed down through generations. Early drafts of this poem were confusing because of perspective shifts between the movie and my childhood. After peer review, I clarified the transitions and made it clear when I was watching the movie and when I was reflecting on my own memories.
It was hard to revise my poems. Not just because I really liked what I wrote (which I did) but also because it’s often hard to find a different way of going about something. My main strategy was to read through the poems again and to try to look for areas that just felt off to me. An example would be in the poem about theme parks where I wrote “ignorant soul.” The phrasing gave it connotations that I wasn’t a major fan of, so I changed it to “excited soul” instead. I think the poem that received the most revision was what I eventually titled “Paper Tigers”. During the peer review, someone suggested I experiment with shorter stanzas since I tend to write long. I broke some up a bit, trying things on for size when I broke off the line “A coward?” into its own stanza. I instantly felt a shift in the way I read the whole poem for the better. I also tried to enliven my word choice a little bit. There was a poem about a friend of mine where I used words that felt lame. So going back I tried to breathe something more into it. Instead of “nice”, it’s “pastel.” Instead of “cool”, it’s “crawling” and so on and so forth. In “Letter to a Name”, I wanted to make the parallel between the addressee and a family dog more clear, because in both the peer review and the class discussion people took it to mean bad experiences with dogs rather than the sad event of putting down the dog. Overall, I feel like getting outside perspective on my work has done wonders for the pieces. Not only has it shown me where I might have gone astray, but it also showed me aspects of the poems that I had never even considered that just made me love the poems even more.
I chose these 4 poems: unbroken trustworthy, Like Insects, Hollow Hands, and my bedroom nightlight. I simply chose these because I liked the way each of them looked and they were the ones I spent the most time working on. I wanted to make them look better and flow off the tongue easier.
My first poem was “unbroken trustworthy”. I picked this one because it contains a quote a dear friend told me. I have always loved deep and meaningful quotes, especially ones rooted in mystery and that ask you to dig deeper into why the human mind does things. I wanted to take a more philosophical approach for this poem, using the nature of trust and the problem of knowledge as my main basis. When it came to revisions, I did not change much besides fixing punctuation and moving my lines around until I got what I liked.
My second poem was “Like Insects”. I picked this poem because I just really enjoy the world of bugs and creepy crawlies. I did not want to make a poem describing how gross insects can be, but instead relating them to the struggles of anxiety. Each stanza has different ways insects react to the world around them and the large amount of struggles they go through in their short life spans. For revisions, I added more imagery by adding different kinds of bugs while still being able to connect them to the human world.
My third poem was “Hollow Hands”. I picked this one because I like how it delves into the complete opposite of most cheerful poems full of rainbows and butterflies. I wanted to unveil the evil side of humanity, the one that is too far gone to help. So, I decided to base it off of the seven deadly sins. I also added a Corey Taylor quote to give it that 90s feel. My revisions mostly consisted of me taking a lot of time moving around lines so it flowed easily.
My fourth poem was “my bedroom nightlight”. I was really proud of this one. I picked it because it felt like the perfect way to describe a dream. I tried to combine a form of surrealist imagery on a cosmic scale while still giving it that dreamlike state. Besides it being like a dream, I wanted it to feel emotional, not super sad or anything, but tender and full of wonder. I read my poem over and over trying to figure out if I needed to revise anything else but it sounded too good to change anything.
When I was revising my Core 4 I didn’t really sit down and revise them in one go. Instead I revised them bit by bit over time. I found that the peer review we did in class was very helpful for my process. I thought it was really interesting to hear how other people were revising their poems, and how their revision processes were going. I found it very helpful to run some of my ideas past the people in my group, such as some wording changes and questions about commas. I also liked the creative suggestions I got. My favorite was a suggestion to change the wording on part of my poem so it stays more in theme with the rest of the poem. I also realized that I used my super secret group poems for two of my core four. This was helpful because I was able to think about the feedback I received in class from my peers. When I was going through my poems on my own I made sure to read them outloud, so I could hear how they flowed. I also showed them to my roommates for feedback which was pretty fun. I used my drafty draft poem as one of my core four poems as well. For that poem I was most focused on the flow of the poem and how I could modify the wording to convey the meanings while keeping it short and flowing well. My poem Persephone Brings Spring was another completely different revision process. I initially wrote it during class while I was looking at the painting, then I went back and revised it and tried to make a more concrete underlying story. All of my poems got one final go over before I submitted them. This is where I did most of the random word changes and moving commas around. Overall, I feel like I ended up in a really good place with my poems.
I found revising my poems to be challenging in some aspects. A lot of the feedback that I received during the peer review was about expanding on my poems. Three of the ones I chose to revise were fairly short and not super detailed. During my revision I started by thinking of what else I have to say in each poem. Each one had certain themes and metaphors that could definitely be stretched out more. For my poem “orbiting” I decided to add in more celestial elements and really use that to create stronger imagery within the poem. I was already very happy with the way my poem “staying” was before revisions, but I still decided to play around with it and see what else could be there. My poem “storms” was written for the suppose poem prompt. When I first wrote it I already knew that I wanted to add more on to it, but I was having a hard time figuring what else I’d like to say in it. After a lot of drafting and editing I came up with some more lines that I really think elevated the poem. The last poem I revised, “feather” was my longest one, so I didn’t have too much more to add. I did end up changing a few words up to make the message clearer and adding a little bit more imagery to the poem. The last part I had in my revision was titling my poems. Before I started, none of my poems had titles. It took me a long time as titling is something I struggle with, but I am really happy with the ones I ended up choosing. After the revision assignment, I feel as if my poems have transformed and grown into the best versions of them.
The process of revision, whether through poetry or prose, isn’t something that I’m unused to. I’m someone who’s always been relatively confident in my ability, and by extension my capacity to do interesting things with language — something which certainly came in handy in a poetry writing course. That being the case however, I’ve never really been formally educated on the process of writing poetry. I took a course on poetry analysis of contemporary American poetry with Dr. Matthew Anderson during spring semester 2025, and I’ve written some amateur poetry of my own, though it’s only ever been something that I’ve taught myself. Being able to take this course throughout the fall has undoubtably strengthened my ability to write more compelling poems, not only because of learning about new forms, but of more significance in my opinion is the consistent workshops we’ve done throughout the course.
I think that the process of doing daily workshops really did end up giving me a good idea of how poems are recieved. Being able to see how others respond to a poem is an important tool in a poet’s arsenal, and certainly one which I appreciated. Even when it wasn’t my poem being workshopped, getting to see how people responded to any poems we read made me think something along the lines of, “ah so that’s what people think about something like this”, or maybe “I suppose I’ll have to try something like that next”.
I was really happy with my poems and the place that they were in to begin with by the time that we’d selected our core four. The one which I was the least confident about was Uncovering, my poem about flipping rocks in tidal pools, and I do believe this is because I wrote it in class in about five minutes on the day we selected our core four. Whatever the case, I found the process of revision to be tweaking more than overhauling. While I was working on my poem, I was playing with punctuation, specific word choices, and the way that the poem sounded more than structurally reworking the entire poem top bottom. In the end I’m very pleased with where the poems landed, and the poem conference with Jesse I think really gave some good insight into how to strengthen them even further. I am strongly considering working on a collection of poems which I would be excited to try and get published, so here’s to much more revision and poetry writing in the future!
At first I wasn’t quite sure how I would revise my core 4. I spent a lot of time writing the original poems and was doubtful that I’d find enough things to change or fix in them. But as I went back and read through each one again I found many things I wanted to change. The majority of these alterations were based on the feedback I got from my peer reviews. Starting with my poem “Solstice,” I added another line of metaphor towards the end, as well as some punctuation and structure changes. We read my poems “Sister” and “The Scale” in class and from the feedback I was hearing then, I realized that they needed a little more context to make them more immersive and digestible. So, in “Sister” I added a few extra lines and expanded on metaphors. For “The Scale” I changed almost everything. I added and fixed a lot of lines to make the message clear. I also gave the poem a real shape, the lines shorten and lengthen to create a feeling and look of tumbling and receding waves, or some sort of roller coaster. Lastly, “Antihero,” being my shortest and most concise poem, there wasn’t much room for major changes. I added punctuation in many lines so that they felt more like solid statements and reflected that assertive, blunt tone of the poem.
When writing and revising my Core 4 poems, I went through a number of different processes that helped shape each piece into what it eventually became. When I first began drafting them, my main goal was to write something personal, something that reflected emotions or experiences that were meaningful to me, but to do so in a way that was vague or open enough for readers to find their own meaning in the work. I wanted anyone who read my poems to be able to relate to them, even if their experiences were different from mine. Striking that balance between personal honesty and universal resonance was one of the most challenging parts of my writing process.
As I worked, I also made a conscious effort to incorporate specific details, imagery, and metaphors that weren’t obvious at first thought. I wanted the language to feel fresh and intentional, something that would make a reader pause and think. Because of this, most of my first drafts were extremely rough. I would revise them multiple times, sometimes rewriting entire lines simply because a single word didn’t feel right. I spent a lot of time looking for synonyms or alternative phrasing that felt more unique or captured the exact feeling I was trying to express.
Even though a lot of my writing shares a similar tone or emotional style, I always try to include at least one line, image, or structural choice that makes each poem distinct from the others. That one unique moment helps anchor the poem and gives it a personality of its own.
I ultimately chose my Core 4, April, Last Night, You Came Back, Summer Sun, and Living Grief, for a few different reasons. I selected Summer Sun and Last Night, You Came Back because they were two pieces that had been received especially well during class workshops. Hearing my classmates connect with them gave me confidence in their strength and made me excited to continue refining them. On the other hand, I chose April and Living Grief because I felt both poems had potential but weren’t quite where I wanted them to be. I had reached a sort of writer’s block with each one, and I needed outside perspectives to help me see what wasn’t working and where I could push the language further. Receiving feedback on those pieces helped me better understand my own intentions and ultimately strengthened all four poems.
The difference of getting to hear feedback from others before explaining my poems to them vs after was really interesting. I liked getting to read my poem aloud the way I had written it to others then having them reflect on that. I believe it gave them a different perspective that was able to help them come up with other notes than what they had originally written by reading it and interpreting it by themselves. I preferred the peer review the way we did with groups of 3 that way you aren’t just hearing from one other person. This made it easier to bounce ideas off of each other and brainstorm to improve not just my own poem, but my partners. Hearing from my own professor was also helpful granted that the revision process doesn’t normally involve one’s professor. So, getting feedback from the one who teaches the poetry class was something I appreciated having the opportunity of. In terms of revising my poems, I made minor edits from the suggestions I was given. I find it difficult coming to terms with the way my poems turn out. This is because I always feel like there is room for improvement. Having read my poems over and over again, looking for ways to make it better, taking in the feedback I was given by others, it’s hard to make final edits. The way I avoided going down a constant hole of this was by not overanalyzing things too deeply. I am pleased with the outcome of my poems because I enjoyed the challenging writing process of them and they are something of a topic that resonates with me.
Within my revisions of core 4 there were two poems that I didn’t make any changes to at all. These poems are called Sterile and Ice. I think a part of the reason for not changing these poems is because I worked on changing them so much throughout the semester that by this time they are fully finished. Also, before even writing these poems I understood exactly what I wanted to portray when reading them.
The first poem that I decided to change was Boiling. I completely deleted the first two stanza which read. “ As I was drowning you tied rocks to my legs But now I’ve hiked to the peak, You ask for honesty Do you want the ‘right’ answer?”. I decided to delete these because the first two stanzas of this poem are completely different scenarios than the rest of the poem so it makes sense that the flow works so much better without it. I also enjoy that my new first line which is “It simmers in her chest Like water left to boil” is much more punchy than the previous first line.
The second poem that I decided to change was called Endeavorment of Meeting Someone There. I had a difficult time changing this poem because I truly didn’t know where I wanted to go with it or even the purpose/message I wanted to convey to someone reading the poem. So, I decided to change it completely. This poem took me a long time to come to terms with, I definitely still have things I don’t want to face within this poem.
The four poems I chose for my core four were highway fox, To Fly Away, Plant Eulogies, and The Nightmares of October. I picked these four because they are very representative of myself. I tend to write about myself using metaphors which can be seen in Plant Eulogies and To Fly Away.
1st Poem (To Fly Away): I chose this poem because it was the first poem I wrote for this class. I compare myself to a bird that I saw while sitting outside writing the poem. Drafting this poem was difficult because it’s so short but my group members from the peer review suggested I identify the bird which was a bit difficult because I don’t know much about birds but once I googled I decided it was a Sturgeon.
2nd Poem (highway fox): I picked this poem because it is a testament to how deeply emotional I am as a person. I wrote this poem while driving on the highway. I used voice memos and ended up crying because I was so upset. I normally get so sad when I see roadkill and I love the juxtaposition of grotesque and cozy images.
3rd Poem (Plant Eulogies): I picked this poem because it’s my most unique. The content of the poem is a metaphor for losing friends even though I have done my best to keep them. I compare my plant care for friendship struggles. I think the metaphor isn’t fully accessible for the reader but I like it that way. I like to play with odd spacing which I did here quite a bit. Because we read this in class for a super secret poem, I have a lot of feedback on it. There were some small tweaks I made after that class where we workshopped it. I then realized that one of my short stanzas didn’t add much to the overall poem and I deleted it. My group members for our peer review brought the stanza to my attention and I think removing it made the poem feel less wordy.
4th Poem (The Nightmares of October): I picked this poem because it is deeply personal and with that comes strong writing. This poem is about a nightmare I have where I am trapped in the shed where my aunt took her own life. I am very proud of the intense feelings this poem brings up for me and the reader. I also think my use of repetition in this poem was nice and I wanted to showcase that in my core four; as I often use repetition in my poems. During peer review the consensus for this poem was not to touch it unless I feel the need to. I agreed at the moment but once I met with Professor Miller, I realized that this poem would do very well in a collection of poems to add more context as to why this vague nightmare is so scary. I am a bit burnt out at the moment but I have some ideas and am excited to write the two poems I want this poem to be put with.
13 thoughts on “REVISION REFLECTION-BY 11/25”
When I look back at this semester and the work I have done, I noticed a trend with the poems that I have written, and that is they are a mixture of melancholy relatability and dealing with mental hurdles, but also a mixture of psychological horror and other elements of horror. I really put a lot of myself in these poems, but also let my love for the horror genre pour through. It culminated in a mixture and combination of real-life horror homages that also caused me to really put myself on the paper. With that being said, the Core 4 poems that I chose were the ones I chose because I wanted to reflect and show the type of writing that I do in this class, and I used these 4 poems as an example to show the reflection and vulnerability that I pour into these poems. My first and last ones are very personable poems that reflect on my journey as a person, as well as my journey as a writer who has a passion for the field. These two poems really show who I am and I wanted the rest of the class to experience my life first hand. The other two are reflection of my love of the horror genre. “Neon” is dedicated entirely to a horror movie from this decade that talks about depression and finding yourself, even if the person you find is the weirdest person on the planet to other people. “Voices” is based on the idea of psychological horror, mixed with the mental confidence issues I have had in the past. These two show that horror is a very subjective genre, and allows me to express my ideas and knowledge of the field in more ways than one. When it came to revision, my colleagues believed that all 4 of my poems were incredibly well written, so it was down to the smallest of details. I wanted to change the way some lines looked and changed some word choices around to help the poems flow better, and after reading them out loud, I do think I made the correct decision. Furthermore, my first poem started out as a rhyming poem that did not seem genuine enough. I think as I went on in class and got comfortable with the methods we used, I was able to turn that poem into a genuine reflection and it just seemed to flow a lot more. Flow and words were my biggest things, and I for one am beyond proud of the work I did this semester.
For my first poem, I wanted to reflect on something that is a consistent battle in my life: laundry. I compared it to a reset of my life and how I do enjoy the chore sometimes. Throughout my revision, I played with reshaping the structure, adapting the imagery like peeked and overflowed. By the end, it’s clear that doing laundry is a metaphor for resetting my life for the next week. My second poem is about a pond I grew up on during the summers. My revisions focused on enhancing the imagery to see how it can convey the tone of nostalgia and playing with the line structure, making it shorter. This is one of my favorite poems because I feel teleported to the location. My third poem was revised to focus on strengthening the imagery, changing the pronouns and adjectives, and attempting to clarify some of the vagueness in the piece. I also tried to be aware of the connotations, changing Alps to mountains, which helps shape the imagery that the location is the sea and mountains. When this was reviewed in class, some lines landed well and were understood, while others did not. I think it was a difficult revision process because I wanted to be vague, but needed to do it in the right places. My last poem had a bird theme, so I developed the language by using words like spiraling and clipped. I also worked on line structure to give some lines more of a punch, along with changing the language so the story being told is clearer.
I chose these four poems—Caravaggio, New York, New York, House of Green, and Aurora of Memory—because each one represents a different part of who I am: my passions, my experiences, my childhood, and the memories that continue to shape me. Together, they form a small map of the places, images, and emotions that inspire my writing.
1st Poem (The Fortune Teller): I picked this poem because art is a huge part of my life. I often travel specifically to visit art museums, and I keep a personal collection of poems sparked by the paintings, sculptures, and photographs I encounter. Caravaggio is part of this collection, which I call Art Lover’s Eye. When revising it, I focused on clarifying the dialogue by putting all spoken lines in italics and fixing the grammatical errors that distracted from the poem’s tone and imagery. This piece reflects my relationship with art and how deeply museums influence my creativity.
2nd Poem (New York, New York): I selected this poem because New York has always fascinated me. Although I’ve visited the city multiple times and love its energy and cultures, the photograph I chose from UNE’s online collection (the dreary, grey streets of New York in the early 1900s) showed me a completely different version of the place I know. That contrast inspired the poem. While revising, I italicized the final “new york, new york” to emphasize it as both a title and a closing echo, and adjusted sentence structures and word choices to create a smoother, more rhythmic flow.
3rd Poem (House of Green): This poem is rooted in my childhood and my mother’s green thumb. I grew up in a home that slowly transformed into a jungle of plants, surrounded by 25 acres of woods in Northern Maine. With the doors and windows always open, nature was part of our everyday lives. The poem is dedicated to that connection; to my mother’s care for her plants and the environment I grew up in. Revision for this piece was minimal: I added a few rhyming words for sonic texture and separated some stanzas to create a more intentional structural rhythm.
4th Poem (Aurora of Memory): This final poem came from a prompt about writing in connection with a movie. I chose the scene in Black Panther where T’Challa enters the spirit realm and speaks with his father, because it reminded me of losing my great grandmother when I was young. My mother always tells stories about how close we were and how I used to “see” and talk to her after she passed. I remember having pretend tea parties with her using a tea set that has been passed down through generations. Early drafts of this poem were confusing because of perspective shifts between the movie and my childhood. After peer review, I clarified the transitions and made it clear when I was watching the movie and when I was reflecting on my own memories.
It was hard to revise my poems. Not just because I really liked what I wrote (which I did) but also because it’s often hard to find a different way of going about something. My main strategy was to read through the poems again and to try to look for areas that just felt off to me. An example would be in the poem about theme parks where I wrote “ignorant soul.” The phrasing gave it connotations that I wasn’t a major fan of, so I changed it to “excited soul” instead. I think the poem that received the most revision was what I eventually titled “Paper Tigers”. During the peer review, someone suggested I experiment with shorter stanzas since I tend to write long. I broke some up a bit, trying things on for size when I broke off the line “A coward?” into its own stanza. I instantly felt a shift in the way I read the whole poem for the better. I also tried to enliven my word choice a little bit. There was a poem about a friend of mine where I used words that felt lame. So going back I tried to breathe something more into it. Instead of “nice”, it’s “pastel.” Instead of “cool”, it’s “crawling” and so on and so forth. In “Letter to a Name”, I wanted to make the parallel between the addressee and a family dog more clear, because in both the peer review and the class discussion people took it to mean bad experiences with dogs rather than the sad event of putting down the dog. Overall, I feel like getting outside perspective on my work has done wonders for the pieces. Not only has it shown me where I might have gone astray, but it also showed me aspects of the poems that I had never even considered that just made me love the poems even more.
I chose these 4 poems: unbroken trustworthy, Like Insects, Hollow Hands, and my bedroom nightlight. I simply chose these because I liked the way each of them looked and they were the ones I spent the most time working on. I wanted to make them look better and flow off the tongue easier.
My first poem was “unbroken trustworthy”. I picked this one because it contains a quote a dear friend told me. I have always loved deep and meaningful quotes, especially ones rooted in mystery and that ask you to dig deeper into why the human mind does things. I wanted to take a more philosophical approach for this poem, using the nature of trust and the problem of knowledge as my main basis. When it came to revisions, I did not change much besides fixing punctuation and moving my lines around until I got what I liked.
My second poem was “Like Insects”. I picked this poem because I just really enjoy the world of bugs and creepy crawlies. I did not want to make a poem describing how gross insects can be, but instead relating them to the struggles of anxiety. Each stanza has different ways insects react to the world around them and the large amount of struggles they go through in their short life spans. For revisions, I added more imagery by adding different kinds of bugs while still being able to connect them to the human world.
My third poem was “Hollow Hands”. I picked this one because I like how it delves into the complete opposite of most cheerful poems full of rainbows and butterflies. I wanted to unveil the evil side of humanity, the one that is too far gone to help. So, I decided to base it off of the seven deadly sins. I also added a Corey Taylor quote to give it that 90s feel. My revisions mostly consisted of me taking a lot of time moving around lines so it flowed easily.
My fourth poem was “my bedroom nightlight”. I was really proud of this one. I picked it because it felt like the perfect way to describe a dream. I tried to combine a form of surrealist imagery on a cosmic scale while still giving it that dreamlike state. Besides it being like a dream, I wanted it to feel emotional, not super sad or anything, but tender and full of wonder. I read my poem over and over trying to figure out if I needed to revise anything else but it sounded too good to change anything.
When I was revising my Core 4 I didn’t really sit down and revise them in one go. Instead I revised them bit by bit over time. I found that the peer review we did in class was very helpful for my process. I thought it was really interesting to hear how other people were revising their poems, and how their revision processes were going. I found it very helpful to run some of my ideas past the people in my group, such as some wording changes and questions about commas. I also liked the creative suggestions I got. My favorite was a suggestion to change the wording on part of my poem so it stays more in theme with the rest of the poem. I also realized that I used my super secret group poems for two of my core four. This was helpful because I was able to think about the feedback I received in class from my peers. When I was going through my poems on my own I made sure to read them outloud, so I could hear how they flowed. I also showed them to my roommates for feedback which was pretty fun. I used my drafty draft poem as one of my core four poems as well. For that poem I was most focused on the flow of the poem and how I could modify the wording to convey the meanings while keeping it short and flowing well. My poem Persephone Brings Spring was another completely different revision process. I initially wrote it during class while I was looking at the painting, then I went back and revised it and tried to make a more concrete underlying story. All of my poems got one final go over before I submitted them. This is where I did most of the random word changes and moving commas around. Overall, I feel like I ended up in a really good place with my poems.
I found revising my poems to be challenging in some aspects. A lot of the feedback that I received during the peer review was about expanding on my poems. Three of the ones I chose to revise were fairly short and not super detailed. During my revision I started by thinking of what else I have to say in each poem. Each one had certain themes and metaphors that could definitely be stretched out more. For my poem “orbiting” I decided to add in more celestial elements and really use that to create stronger imagery within the poem. I was already very happy with the way my poem “staying” was before revisions, but I still decided to play around with it and see what else could be there. My poem “storms” was written for the suppose poem prompt. When I first wrote it I already knew that I wanted to add more on to it, but I was having a hard time figuring what else I’d like to say in it. After a lot of drafting and editing I came up with some more lines that I really think elevated the poem. The last poem I revised, “feather” was my longest one, so I didn’t have too much more to add. I did end up changing a few words up to make the message clearer and adding a little bit more imagery to the poem. The last part I had in my revision was titling my poems. Before I started, none of my poems had titles. It took me a long time as titling is something I struggle with, but I am really happy with the ones I ended up choosing. After the revision assignment, I feel as if my poems have transformed and grown into the best versions of them.
The process of revision, whether through poetry or prose, isn’t something that I’m unused to. I’m someone who’s always been relatively confident in my ability, and by extension my capacity to do interesting things with language — something which certainly came in handy in a poetry writing course. That being the case however, I’ve never really been formally educated on the process of writing poetry. I took a course on poetry analysis of contemporary American poetry with Dr. Matthew Anderson during spring semester 2025, and I’ve written some amateur poetry of my own, though it’s only ever been something that I’ve taught myself. Being able to take this course throughout the fall has undoubtably strengthened my ability to write more compelling poems, not only because of learning about new forms, but of more significance in my opinion is the consistent workshops we’ve done throughout the course.
I think that the process of doing daily workshops really did end up giving me a good idea of how poems are recieved. Being able to see how others respond to a poem is an important tool in a poet’s arsenal, and certainly one which I appreciated. Even when it wasn’t my poem being workshopped, getting to see how people responded to any poems we read made me think something along the lines of, “ah so that’s what people think about something like this”, or maybe “I suppose I’ll have to try something like that next”.
I was really happy with my poems and the place that they were in to begin with by the time that we’d selected our core four. The one which I was the least confident about was Uncovering, my poem about flipping rocks in tidal pools, and I do believe this is because I wrote it in class in about five minutes on the day we selected our core four. Whatever the case, I found the process of revision to be tweaking more than overhauling. While I was working on my poem, I was playing with punctuation, specific word choices, and the way that the poem sounded more than structurally reworking the entire poem top bottom. In the end I’m very pleased with where the poems landed, and the poem conference with Jesse I think really gave some good insight into how to strengthen them even further. I am strongly considering working on a collection of poems which I would be excited to try and get published, so here’s to much more revision and poetry writing in the future!
At first I wasn’t quite sure how I would revise my core 4. I spent a lot of time writing the original poems and was doubtful that I’d find enough things to change or fix in them. But as I went back and read through each one again I found many things I wanted to change. The majority of these alterations were based on the feedback I got from my peer reviews. Starting with my poem “Solstice,” I added another line of metaphor towards the end, as well as some punctuation and structure changes. We read my poems “Sister” and “The Scale” in class and from the feedback I was hearing then, I realized that they needed a little more context to make them more immersive and digestible. So, in “Sister” I added a few extra lines and expanded on metaphors. For “The Scale” I changed almost everything. I added and fixed a lot of lines to make the message clear. I also gave the poem a real shape, the lines shorten and lengthen to create a feeling and look of tumbling and receding waves, or some sort of roller coaster. Lastly, “Antihero,” being my shortest and most concise poem, there wasn’t much room for major changes. I added punctuation in many lines so that they felt more like solid statements and reflected that assertive, blunt tone of the poem.
When writing and revising my Core 4 poems, I went through a number of different processes that helped shape each piece into what it eventually became. When I first began drafting them, my main goal was to write something personal, something that reflected emotions or experiences that were meaningful to me, but to do so in a way that was vague or open enough for readers to find their own meaning in the work. I wanted anyone who read my poems to be able to relate to them, even if their experiences were different from mine. Striking that balance between personal honesty and universal resonance was one of the most challenging parts of my writing process.
As I worked, I also made a conscious effort to incorporate specific details, imagery, and metaphors that weren’t obvious at first thought. I wanted the language to feel fresh and intentional, something that would make a reader pause and think. Because of this, most of my first drafts were extremely rough. I would revise them multiple times, sometimes rewriting entire lines simply because a single word didn’t feel right. I spent a lot of time looking for synonyms or alternative phrasing that felt more unique or captured the exact feeling I was trying to express.
Even though a lot of my writing shares a similar tone or emotional style, I always try to include at least one line, image, or structural choice that makes each poem distinct from the others. That one unique moment helps anchor the poem and gives it a personality of its own.
I ultimately chose my Core 4, April, Last Night, You Came Back, Summer Sun, and Living Grief, for a few different reasons. I selected Summer Sun and Last Night, You Came Back because they were two pieces that had been received especially well during class workshops. Hearing my classmates connect with them gave me confidence in their strength and made me excited to continue refining them. On the other hand, I chose April and Living Grief because I felt both poems had potential but weren’t quite where I wanted them to be. I had reached a sort of writer’s block with each one, and I needed outside perspectives to help me see what wasn’t working and where I could push the language further. Receiving feedback on those pieces helped me better understand my own intentions and ultimately strengthened all four poems.
The difference of getting to hear feedback from others before explaining my poems to them vs after was really interesting. I liked getting to read my poem aloud the way I had written it to others then having them reflect on that. I believe it gave them a different perspective that was able to help them come up with other notes than what they had originally written by reading it and interpreting it by themselves. I preferred the peer review the way we did with groups of 3 that way you aren’t just hearing from one other person. This made it easier to bounce ideas off of each other and brainstorm to improve not just my own poem, but my partners. Hearing from my own professor was also helpful granted that the revision process doesn’t normally involve one’s professor. So, getting feedback from the one who teaches the poetry class was something I appreciated having the opportunity of. In terms of revising my poems, I made minor edits from the suggestions I was given. I find it difficult coming to terms with the way my poems turn out. This is because I always feel like there is room for improvement. Having read my poems over and over again, looking for ways to make it better, taking in the feedback I was given by others, it’s hard to make final edits. The way I avoided going down a constant hole of this was by not overanalyzing things too deeply. I am pleased with the outcome of my poems because I enjoyed the challenging writing process of them and they are something of a topic that resonates with me.
Within my revisions of core 4 there were two poems that I didn’t make any changes to at all. These poems are called Sterile and Ice. I think a part of the reason for not changing these poems is because I worked on changing them so much throughout the semester that by this time they are fully finished. Also, before even writing these poems I understood exactly what I wanted to portray when reading them.
The first poem that I decided to change was Boiling. I completely deleted the first two stanza which read. “ As I was drowning you tied rocks to my legs But now I’ve hiked to the peak, You ask for honesty Do you want the ‘right’ answer?”. I decided to delete these because the first two stanzas of this poem are completely different scenarios than the rest of the poem so it makes sense that the flow works so much better without it. I also enjoy that my new first line which is “It simmers in her chest Like water left to boil” is much more punchy than the previous first line.
The second poem that I decided to change was called Endeavorment of Meeting Someone There. I had a difficult time changing this poem because I truly didn’t know where I wanted to go with it or even the purpose/message I wanted to convey to someone reading the poem. So, I decided to change it completely. This poem took me a long time to come to terms with, I definitely still have things I don’t want to face within this poem.
The four poems I chose for my core four were highway fox, To Fly Away, Plant Eulogies, and The Nightmares of October. I picked these four because they are very representative of myself. I tend to write about myself using metaphors which can be seen in Plant Eulogies and To Fly Away.
1st Poem (To Fly Away): I chose this poem because it was the first poem I wrote for this class. I compare myself to a bird that I saw while sitting outside writing the poem. Drafting this poem was difficult because it’s so short but my group members from the peer review suggested I identify the bird which was a bit difficult because I don’t know much about birds but once I googled I decided it was a Sturgeon.
2nd Poem (highway fox): I picked this poem because it is a testament to how deeply emotional I am as a person. I wrote this poem while driving on the highway. I used voice memos and ended up crying because I was so upset. I normally get so sad when I see roadkill and I love the juxtaposition of grotesque and cozy images.
3rd Poem (Plant Eulogies): I picked this poem because it’s my most unique. The content of the poem is a metaphor for losing friends even though I have done my best to keep them. I compare my plant care for friendship struggles. I think the metaphor isn’t fully accessible for the reader but I like it that way. I like to play with odd spacing which I did here quite a bit. Because we read this in class for a super secret poem, I have a lot of feedback on it. There were some small tweaks I made after that class where we workshopped it. I then realized that one of my short stanzas didn’t add much to the overall poem and I deleted it. My group members for our peer review brought the stanza to my attention and I think removing it made the poem feel less wordy.
4th Poem (The Nightmares of October): I picked this poem because it is deeply personal and with that comes strong writing. This poem is about a nightmare I have where I am trapped in the shed where my aunt took her own life. I am very proud of the intense feelings this poem brings up for me and the reader. I also think my use of repetition in this poem was nice and I wanted to showcase that in my core four; as I often use repetition in my poems. During peer review the consensus for this poem was not to touch it unless I feel the need to. I agreed at the moment but once I met with Professor Miller, I realized that this poem would do very well in a collection of poems to add more context as to why this vague nightmare is so scary. I am a bit burnt out at the moment but I have some ideas and am excited to write the two poems I want this poem to be put with.