Andrew Langdon

Pagnani

English

13 February 2012

Creative Poem Reflection

There are some poems that spark emotion the instant they are read. No matter what the

subject is, the diction, punctuation, and themes really connect with the reader. But on a greater

level, writing poetry is even more emotional. If you have a topic that truly relates to you and how

you feel, writing a poem about it is eye-opening. It takes the knowledge of how to use language

and poetic elements to portray the same emotions you had, to your audience. When I write a

poem, I try to find an event or feeling that has most recently happened. In the case of this project,

my poems were titled “A Song for the Fated Soldier” and “The Boy and His Dog”.

“A Song for the Fated Soldier” was inspired by U.S. History class. At the time, my

instructor was teaching about propaganda during World War I and how the draft affected so

many American people. I pictured myself going to war at my age and the damage it would do on

my family. I wrote the poem with this thought in the back of my mind, and “Little Johnny” is

actually a vision of me if I lived 80 years ago. In order to capture the attention of my readers, I

used a rhyming poem. Listening to the “reviews” of my fellow peers when reading poetry in

English class, people enjoy rhyming poetry more than unrhymed. However, the rhymes in “A

Song for the Fated Soldier” are mostly approximate rhymes rather than perfect rhymes. An

example of an approximate rhyme would be the words “died” and “alive” whereas a perfect

rhyme would be “done” and “won”. The poem flows nicely with the rhymes at the end of each

line. The other poetic device found in “A Song for the Fated Soldier” is the use of assonances.
An assonance is a partial rhyme that uses the same internal vowel sounds. An example of this

would be “happen” and “madmen”. Because both words have a short “a” sound and endings that

rhyme, they are assonances. Assonances have the same effect as rhyming. It helps the poem flow

well and gives it rhythm. I chose to use assonances because of the way the sound. Honestly, it

was kind of entertaining to come up with words that were assonances, which also held the same

meanings as what I wanted to say.

The second of my creative poems, “The Boy and His Dog”, was written in free verse

style. There are some rhymes, but overall, the “rules” of poetry are disregarded. I wrote this

poem the day after my family had to euthanize my dog that had contracted Lyme Disease. Again,

the boy who is best friends with the dog is modeled after me. As stated in the poem, my dog was

like my best friend and only 4 years old when we put her down. The emotion obviously came

from the recent loss and was strengthened by the fact that it had happened only a day earlier.

When the dog ran away in the poem, I related it to the feeling of watching my dog suffer through

treatment. Her paws were very swollen and what had once been a happy, energetic dog, was now

depressed and lethargic. There was nothing I could do but sit and keep her company. But I

digress, and we go back to the poetic elements used throughout the poem. The first is an

alliteration. An alliteration is a group of words that begin with the same sentence. In “The Boy

and His Dog”, an example would be, “His paws were swollen and his demeanor was diminished

drastically”. Notice how the words “demeanor”, “diminished”, and “drastically” all begin with

the letter “d”. The purpose of this was to have the sentence roll of the tongue and stick in the

minds of the reader. Finally, the last poetic device used in “The Boy and His Dog” is the shape

of the poem. Throughout the piece, there are large spaces in between phrases. The reason for this
is to really make a specific phrase stand out. Because it is all alone, the reader must take extra

time to read over the phrase.

Writing poetry is much different than reading it, and especially different than reading

prose. It takes some skill so have the poems make sense but still sound good, so writing poetry is

not for everyone. However, if you are good at writing creative, thought-provoking, emotion-

wrenching pieces, poetry is the way to go. By using various poetic devices and specific language,

the power of writing a poem can be even greater than reading one.