Richard Jones Research Paper

REFFELCTION ESSAY FOR POEM “THE LUMINARY” I chose to write a poem using six words from Webster’s Dictionary page we were given as an exercise in Dr. Brown’s “Book Notes on Jones.” My poem uses a technique related to Jones’ poem “OED” though not identical. I’ve also broken the poem into three parts like the Jones’ book. The parts are “Prelude,” “~,” and “The Marmot’s Luminary.” Is think my choice is justified in that it becomes obvious how my work is related to his. The “Prelude” poem makes it plain what method I’m using in the assignment. It also lists the words I chose and their definitions. I didn’t want to exactly copy Jones’ method so I decided to make the words into the story presented in the third part rather than presenting the word lookup process and definitions in the poem content. The poem then differs from “OED” in that the word’s definitions are not used in the poem. Also unlike Jones’ “OED” the love of words is not a theme of my poem. There was certainly a challenge in creatively fitting a somewhat random selection of words into a possibly interesting narrative poem. The poem is …show more content…
I have never before read a book of poetry structured like this. The use of symbols instead of words was new to me. My use here is limited but still it was fun to do. I would have liked to have imitated other characteristics of his style those having to do with content and individual poem structure. He often takes an incident or scene and develops it in a very spare and elemental way but still finds a way to slip in drama, surprises and sometimes even shock and awe. “Searching for a Heart” is one where an ordinary day teaching a class is turned into gory open chest surgery. I didn’t choose to try this since I was concerned that it would be beyond my ability. I picked the six words way of starting since it was something that forced me to get started without having to come up with a good preconceived idea or