Poem Workshop Reflection

    When I listened and took notes to what my peers discussed while, not only, workshopping my poem, but also the comments and questions that they annotated onto the piece, I learned how it isn't always easy to depict personal creativity to another reader. Whilst writing, any uses of metaphors, symbols, similes, and connotative diction are formed by the mind of the author with an understanding as to what it references and shows to them. However, readers don't share the same mindset, so any reference may not be understood as to whether or not the situation at hand is literal or not. For example, a large issue that was brought up during the discussion of my poem was to who the "she" that was mentioned and a subject for the starting lines of the poem was. Due to the fact I wrote it and knew what the "scene played out" was, I easily read the "she" in context to a girl from a documentary. However, due to the fact that "she" wasn't explicitly stated and that a "scene" can take on many forms, my peers believed that the speaker, that being myself, was the girl mentioned and that I was viewing myself in third person, instead of it being a, literal, separate individual. So, any moves or phrasing should be created with the mindset as to how an outside individual is reading it instead of what I, the author, believes to be understandable. As well as, there's a big difference to describing a situation from experiencing a situation. A lot of my poem was quickly brought from one moment to the next without much context towards what is happening in the situation and how the speaker is feeling, and the only way for this to be improved is through action verbs. Action verbs will allow for a story to be told instead of explained and will allow for a better comprehension as to what the moment is if there's a clearer idea of what is happening around it. Additionally, it is important that an author chooses comparison that are in relation to the subject. Throughout my poem, I had incorporated a metaphor of a ship in reference to weight and fuel that feeds a ships ability to run. Though the comparison is similar in context to an eating disorder, it doesn't properly reflect and expand on the situation; instead, it is an abrupt inclusion that is either not expanded on enough or completely takes away from the main theme. Therefore, when I revise my poem, I'll pay close attention to incorporating action verbs to expand the moment to make it more distinct and to develop how the speaker is feeling. I'll also brainstorm different metaphors to replace the metaphor of the ship so it builds onto the moment at hand, and actually develops the mental battle and eating habits of the speaker, and I'll explicitly state a few elements to eliminate confusion.