Poetry Project:
Final Poem:The Old Woman’s Eyes
-Camryn Sippy Knowledge is the story between tattered book covers, breathtaking and eloquent, experiences telling a story of their own. A new page penned with each passing day, a new chapter with each passing year. This is the first page of her story: her mother’s joyous tears gleam like sunshine, as one drops on her tiny, flush face. Stark hospital walls and swaddling baby blankets, there is knowledge in her youthful eyes. She takes her first steps, on bumbling and unsteady fawn legs, falling to the cushioned carpet floor. She is learning. One, two, three tries for success. Knowledge stands bumbling and unsteady. Feet struggle to push the pedals, leaning and weaving, rolling slowly forward with encouragement from her father, a new page written as she earns freedom. Knowledge is in the ghost stories told around a campfire on a cool summers night: fire crackling, flames daring to lick the universe. Knowledge contained by blankets wrapped around giggling bodies and shivering shoulders, jumping at the cracks and the sparks, afraid of the dark. Knowledge is the adrenaline coursing through her veins, pumping through her heart to every last limb. Jumping off the rocks, giddy shrieks ring in the air, plunging into the ice cold summer water. Knowledge is in her smile as she’s traveling across the ocean searching for the perfect sunset with someone special by her side. Shedding blue bird sky tears of her own, as she sees her newborn for the first time. Swaddled in love. Small hands grasping at the air, finally closing around a finger, knowledge passing with a spark. Her pages turn as she watches her child grow and learn, She hears her daughter’s knowledge in her laugh, and sees it in eyes that are so much her own. Knowledge is the creases on the old woman’s smiling face, years of experience and wonder filling the cracks and pooling in her large green eyes. It seeps from her being, clothes her skin, and envelops her soul. There is knowledge in her last ‘I love you’, there is knowledge in her last breath, she has seen it all as she closes her eyes for the last time. This may be the last page in her book, but this is not the end of her story. Her knowledge lives in her children, her grandchildren. It lives in photographs and memories, it lives in the sunlight and in laughter. It lives in the trees, spreading upwards and outwards and she drifts in the wind and rests in the canyons. Her book is constantly reprinted, forever being read. |
Growth as a Poet Reflection: Throughout the process of writing this poem, my perspective and message changed as I refined and had peers critique my poem. I first wrote about how I see knowledge as something that one can not learn in school and I chose to do this in a very general way. I wrote the first draft of my poem using mostly metaphors and similes yet none of them connected with each other. The poem was very jumbled and was written with constant metaphors and similes. “Knowledge is the blood coursing through your veins / Pumping through your heart / And spreading to every last limb.” In this part of my poem, I am just repeatedly stating the different ways that I interpret knowledge. After reading the critiques about my poem, I decided to change the message and the perspective of my piece to set a different emotional tone. In the drafts following I changed my poem almost completely. Instead of just writing about how I perceive knowledge, I turned it into more of a story about a girl’s life and how she grows and changes through the experiences that she has. In the final draft of my poem, I wrote about how knowledge is in the little things and life that people do and how I feel that those things make them grow as a person and become wiser. “Her pages turn as she watches her child grow and learn, / She hears her daughter’s knowledge in her laugh, / and sees it in eyes that are so much her own.” The woman in the poem gains wisdom and knowledge as she experiences the little things in life that happen everyday. These little things change and shape her, making her an individual.
One of the biggest changes that I made during my early drafts was changing my perception of knowledge and how I choose to talk about it. During the first draft of my poem, I talk about knowledge in a very generalized way and I use mostly metaphors comparing it to random objects. I was in the stage of writing my poem where I knew that I wanted to write about yet I wasn’t sure how to tie the poem together because every stanza was a new knowledge comparison. “Knowledge is the blood coursing through your veins, / Pumping through your heart / And spreading to every last limb… Branches on a tree, / Knowledge spreads upwards and outwards / You can never stop learning.” The different stanzas didn’t flow together because I was just listing metaphors about knowledge without a story behind the poem. As I revised my poem, I added a story behind the knowledge metaphors. I turned my poem into a story about a girl from the moment she is born until the moment that she dies and the experiences that she has. I chose to use the experience that she as knowledge because they form and shape her, turning her into the person she has grown to be at the end of my poem. “Knowledge is in the ghost stories told around a campfire on a cool summers night: / fire crackling, flames daring to lick the universe. / Knowledge contained by blankets wrapped around giggling bodies and shivering shoulders, / jumping at the cracks and the sparks, / afraid of the dark… Small hands grasping at the air, / finally closing around a finger, / knowledge passing with a spark.” My poem was telling a story of a girl’s life through a book and how she grew and changed through the passing days. After doing the in class critiques, I got the feedback that I needed to change some of my lines and stanzas because they sounded cliche and took away from the power of my poem. This was still in the early drafts and I needed to do major revisions to my poem because of the length and the originality. Since I was writing about the life of this girl, I was also writing about her life experiences. Yet I was focusing mostly on the big events that happen in her life and not the small, unique events that would make the poem more original. “Her pages turn as she watched her child grow and learn, / Through soccer practice, / Summer, / Ice cream sundaes, / And love. / She sees her daughter’s knowledge in her laugh, / And in daughter’s eyes that are so much her own.” This stanza sounded cliche because these are the typical things that a person refers to when they talk about childhood and growing up. There wasn’t any originality and uniqueness in this stanza because it was something that had been written so many times before. In order to fix this, I had to cut out certain lines from my poem and bumped up the word choice to make it sound better. “Her pages turn as she watches her child grow and learn, / She hears her daughter’s knowledge in her laugh, / and sees it in eyes that are so much her own.” In the final draft of my poem, I changed the original stanza about watching her child grow through events such as soccer practice to something more general. I changed this stanza so that it would match the theme of the pages in a book like the rest of the poem. By doing this, I made this stanza a little more general and less cliche while also altering the emotional tone of the poem to make the reader feel her days passing. One thing that I struggled with while practicing presenting my poem was changing my tone. While I practiced, some of the feedback that I got was that I sounded monotone when I was presenting and I didn’t put enough emotion into my performance. I was encouraged to make bigger and bolder hand and body movements and to add emphasis on certain parts of the poem. Originally when I performed this part of the poem: “She takes her first steps, / on bumbling and unsteady fawn legs, / falling to the cushioned carpet floor. / She is learning. / One, two, three tries for success. / Knowledge stands bumbling and unsteady.” I didn’t change my tone or do many body movements so that it would match the rest of the poem. Yet, after I practiced more and more, I tried incorporating body movements that would mimic what was going on in the poem. For example, at the part that says: on bumbling and unsteady fawn legs, / falling to the cushioned carpet floor.” I wobbled around on my own feet like a toddler would as they learn how to walk, then I pretended to fall to the ground like the girl in my poem. By downing this, my poem began to gain more natural pauses that would add to the affect of my poem along with change my tone. I was also given the suggestion to sound happy and excited because it is such a happy and exciting thing in real life. By changing the tone and the body movements for this stanza of my poem, I was able to appropriately change my tone in slight ways throughout the entire poem. |
Globalization Project:
Reflection:For this project , we chose a topic related to globalization then researched and created a perspective on the topic. After research, we wrote an Opinionated Editorial and drew a Political Cartoon based on our perspective of the topic.I chose to write about the child sex trade of Cambodia and how the consumption of cheap products produced in the country are leading to sex trafficking.
After doing this project I have a whole new understanding as to what globalization is. Before doing this project, I didn't really know what globalization was and how it affects us. Yet, now I see how globalization is all around us and plays a role in our everyday life. My biggest takeaway from this project was learning about how one action can be a contributing factor to so many other issues. For example, in my Op-Ed I talk about how the consumption of cheap, US products made in Cambodia has lead to the growth of the child sex trade inside that country. By paying low prices to buy a product made in Cambodia, you have contributing to the extremely low pay wages resulting in the sex trafficking of adolescents in Cambodia. Through making my cartoon, I have gained many new skills. In my first draft of my cartoon I didn't have any captions or labels to make it clear as to what my cartoon was about and what my perspective was on the topic. After making more drafts and having more critiques, I learned the importance of labels and captioning and how a small label can enhance the entire cartoon greatly. By learning new symbolism techniques, I was able to incorporate bigger, clearer symbols into my cartoon allowing me to have less clutter in my picture. Through the labeling and symbolism techniques, I believe that my final cartoon is very clear and powerful. This Op-Ed assignment is different from any other writing assignment that I have done before. Our Op-Ed had to in between a certain amount of words and had to clearly state your perspective on your issues through a thesis, evidence, and analysis. The paragraphs were shorts and straight to the point. Through this assignment I learned how to be very direct with my writing and how to incorporation my perspective in a professional manner. These skill are import because all of them can be used on assignments in the future. In future assignments I plan to use my new kills of clarity to get to the point and my opinions and perspective quicker. I also plan to use the skill of writing in a professional manner when having to writing an assignment without using the words "I" or "me". |
Cartoon: |
Vietnam War Art Piece:
Artist Statement:
My piece Orange Barrels is about the herbicide Agent Orange and the effects that it has on the environment today. From 1962 to 1971, the United States sprayed 11.4 million gallons of the the harmful defoliant on the Vietnamese rainforest. Not only does it continue to harm the environment but it also continues to affect the people of Vietnam, along with people from the U.S. that came into contact with it. In this piece, I show the effects of Agent Orange on people generations after the war and the birth defects that have been caused by the chemical.