My poetry composing process was much more difficult than I had hoped it would be. I browsed through many of the links provided by Professor Reiss and I found a one in the Literary Resources Online site to Poetry and Song. This immediately captured my attention as I hoped to write a song, call it a poem, set it to music, compose a little ditty to go with it and life would be good.

Through the course of this project and with Professor Reiss’ help, for which I am grateful, I learned that simply writing any poem would not meet the requirements for this assignment. I would be required to put myself in a writing situation to a particular audience. I had to tweak my work so much that I think I may have been better off starting from scratch. I like the way it turned out even though my diction and syntax are definitely very amateurish. Setting the poem to music helped tremendously in keeping rhythmic phrasing uniform. Better diction and syntax would have further improved the rhythmic flow, but I was able to get every other line to rhyme. I used a very simple A, B form.

I considered writing a poem about riding my bike, but writing an appropriate musical score and having it performed and recorded would have been a real hassle, and taken much more time and effort than I would be able to dedicate to this project. I also consider a poem about technology, until I read a similar student example from a previous class. That could have been interesting with the use of various sound effects, but once I read the poem I had the authors ideas in my head and decided it wouldn’t be worth the struggle to try to forget that work. I finally decided to write a fictional poem about being a member of the crew of a gallant ship’s last voyage and how a mermaid would warn me of this. I wrote a poem, sealed it in a bottle and threw it to the sea so our loved ones might learn of our fate.

Writing poetry allows me to express myself in another voice and genre by responding to a rhetorical situation that is different from what we have done thus far in our other assignments. I decided what to create as soon as I read the aforementioned Poetry and Song link because I thought working in an area of familiarity would help enable me achieve the highest possible grade. I decided to use a website as my media because I felt it would be the best tool to get my desired effect. I titled my poem “The Mermaid” so I thought it would be appropriate to create a picture of one (mermaid), although it ended up being three, to use as a background image. I used a lot of opacity to give it a murky, mystical yet nautical effect and used a table background color that I felt complimented my theme appropriately. I also composed a simple three-chord sea song to further enhance this poetry project. I actually surprised myself – I did not think I would be able to write a poem.