Reflective Essay: Figurative Language

This semester in Introduction to Poetry Writing, I believe I have grown in using figurative language to ‘show, not tell’ and in the creativity of how and what I write. I was encouraged to write about a variety of topics in this class, and I thought differently about each of these, learning to find my voice in the process. Poetry was not something I was too familiar with prior to this semester, but I have always been a lover of books and writing since I can remember. This class has helped me use my passion to read and write for creative purposes, and I am glad I was both challenged and supported in my endeavors in the class as the semester continued. I believe these challenges of what to write and how to write in the class led to me becoming …show more content…
Instead, I was to write contemporary poetry similar to that of Tony Hoagland. I feel as if I came into the class with a burst of creativity waiting to be shared, and it was in this fashion that I started off my poetry of the semester in one of my own favorites called “A Day’s Dreaming Before I Sleep.” This poem’s prompt was to talk about things you love and hate the dichotomy between those things. I decided to follow the prompt, and it ended up that I constructed the poem in a ‘day-in-the-life’ format, starting from when I wake up and take a shower to when I go to sleep and struggle with thoughts, “I love sleeping when the day is done./ I hate the time as I drift into sleep / When I am forced to do nothing but think, / And I end up thinking about all the things / That I try so hard to forget.” I think this idea of a day’s schedule was creative because it was clever; I am not sure if my classmates even picked up on this (hopefully relatable) progression of events. I also deliberately added humor and an allusion to pop culture into the poem, such as “I love writing. / Bad grammar, I hate. / The dark side I sense in you! / Hmmmm!” where I channel the voice of Yoda from Star Wars. In these lines, my idea was to make the reader hear Yoda saying that last …show more content…
I wrote my poem about Hudson, OH, using the town’s Starbucks as the setting; it’s customers, the subject. Almost every stanza except a one-line stanza has concrete nouns with imagery describing the coffee shop and people as if the reader was right there. Also, in terms of language, the satirical tone adds to the poem’s message about Hudson, such as “Don’t forget about the teenage girls at a table / Wearing leggings, Sperry’s and oversized hoodies, / Sipping on their PSLs with soy milk, lite whip and extra cinnamon.” I think this stanza is the best representation of imagery and satire in the entire poem, and it 's the imagery and satire that bring the sights, smells, and emotions of the Hudson Starbucks to