Simply Sincere Sentiments

Dear Ms. Kay, My name is Brenna and I am a 17-year-old high school senior. Please forgive me for my formality because although I feel like I know you from your poetry, (that is already a testament to how talented of a writer and poet you are) and thus simply call you “Sarah” in my head, I know that we are not on a first name basis. I am also a writer and a poet, in fact I am a newly published poet and soon-to-be published again poet, so maybe one day we will cross paths and become on a first name basis. Until then, Ms. Kay, I wanted to share with you how much I appreciate and admire you.           You are essentially the reason that I am a poet today. You probably hear that a lot from all your fans, but for me, that is no exaggeration. I was in eighth grade when I discovered you. My eighth grade English teacher used a YouTube video of one of your performances as the introduction to our poetry unit that year. It was a video of you performing your poem “Hands.” Fr...

We all know by now that I am a HUGE word nerd. Therefore, I love when Mrs. Liamini teaches us things like hyperbation : the inversion of the normal order of words as customary to their language for the sake of emphasis.  Some of my other favorite words about words are palindromes and portmanteaus . Here is my attempt at “hyperbating” a poem I wrote. Here is the original poem: Reconvening for Dinner Reconvening for dinner That ordinary time is special for us All other time that is ordinary is isolating for us That is the definition of dysfunctional to me But the others don’t see any difference From the people glowing in the windows across the lawn (instance of imagery) We seem ordinary to them Isolation doesn’t like light Isolation doesn’t let people glow (pinch of personification) They only see fraudulence All our truths are behind shut doors Closed blinds Tight curtains Isolation is the cave of darkness we all prefer to sit in (masterpiece of a metaphor) Here is the poem when I...

My favorite poetry strategy we've learned so far is title analysis. The title sets up the poem and is crucial for readers to interpret it as the poet originally intended. As a writer and a poet myself, I love leaving things open for interpretation (but maybe I'll save that for a future post) and I love creating misleading titles. I hate when other writers leave things open for interpretation, because ambiguity as a reader is annoying and frustrating, but as a writer it is so much fun to do! With misleading titles however, I love creating them and I love the ones created by other writers. I love titles of works that make you think they are about one thing, but then are about something completely different. I have intentionally and deliberately titled two of my own poems in such a way that they are misleading as to what the audience will think their subject matter is. Counting When he looks me in the eye I cry tears of sorrow Because instead ...

I began liking poetry in eighth grade. Before that, I hated poetry. I didn’t want anything to do with it. But in eighth grade I began reading poetry, watching spoken word poetry, (shoutout to Sarah Kay) and most of all, writing poetry. Since then, writing poetry has been one of my biggest hobbies. I now have a huge collection of poems, so I thought I would share one of my favorite ones with you today because while I still don’t love analyzing poetry, I usually either understand the poem or I don’t, I do appreciate the chunking technique that we have been learning in class. It makes analyzing poetry much more tolerable.            This is a poem called Numb. I chose this one to share because not only is it one of my favorite poems that I’ve ever written ( I still don’t know how this specific combination of words came out of me) but because it has a clear shift and can be chunked for analyzation easily. Numb Take her on a roller coaster She’ll sit in silenc...

An interesting concept that I was recently introduced to is the concept of how people play hide and seek with their identities. I never realized before how often and inconspicuously this occurs. Sometimes we are the ones doing it, and other times we are the ones  being fooled and only made privy to fakeness - someone hiding her true identity.            This concept has two variations. The first is the more common one and the one  I just mentioned; people often change  the identity  they choose to present to the world. They change what version of themselves the world gets to see. They frequently, but thus temporarily, change how the world perceives them and, therefore, who the world comes to know them as. This is done by changing the way one acts. One adjusts one’s personality so that one identifies with different people than one normally would. One acquires or achieves a new perception, and thus a new identity, as both are very much int...