This assignment, focused on Robert Frost’s “Design” and original poetry creation, served a dual purpose. As an assessment tool, it aimed to evaluate my understanding of poetic analysis, my ability to replicate and diverge from established forms (sonnet and free verse), and my capacity to articulate the impact of poetic structure. For my portfolio, the intent shifts to showcasing my evolving poetic voice and analytical skills, highlighting my ability to engage with complex themes like mortality and existential dread.
Weaknesses in my original work include a potential lack of nuanced language in my poems. While I attempted to capture a mood, the imagery may be generic. My free verse poem could have benefited from more deliberate line breaks and a stronger sense of rhythm, even without strict meter.
The feedback I received emphasized the strength of my analytical response to Frost’s poem, particularly my understanding of the poem’s thematic tension and structural choices. However, there was a suggestion to refine my poetry by focusing on more specific and evocative imagery.
In my portfolio, this piece will demonstrate my ability to analyze established poetry and create original works that engage with similar themes. It will showcase my understanding of poetic form and my developing ability to use language to create mood and convey meaning. It will highlight my critical thinking and creative expression capacity, illustrating my poetic understanding growth. The analysis of structured versus free-form poetry reveals my understanding of the poet’s tools and how they impact the reader.
Revision:
Part 1
Robert Frost’s “Design” is a deceptive and simple sonnet that delves into questions about the nature of existence and the role of a higher power. His poem hinges on an innocuous image: a white spider devouring a white moth on a white heal-all flower. This extreme, stark, monochromatic tableau disrupts the expected harmony of nature, prompting the speaker to question the underlying forces at play. There lies the questioning of the dichotomy that is life’s most accurate form.
Frost’s use of language is not only crucial to the poem’s impact. Its repetition of the color white develops this prominent sense of eerie detachment; with it comes the emphasis of the unnatural quality that is the scene. The spider, typically seen as a predator and gnashing, is depicted here as a voluptuous, almost infantile creature, blurring the lines between innocence and the menacing knowledge of death. This juxtaposition further disrupts the reader.
The sonnet’s form mirrors the speaker’s internal turmoil and an evil question. The octave sets the scene and establishes the enigma, while the sestet manufactures a grappling with potential explanations. Frost’s careful enjambment and syntax multiply the poem’s sense of unease, mirroring the speaker’s struggle to comprehend the observed event. There is that daunting reality that the speaker cannot or will not face.
Ultimately, “Design” offers no definitive answers. Nevertheless, that is the reason. It faces the honest reality of destructive ways, and nature is in its natural stance. The final question, “If design governs in a thing so small,” hangs in the air, a testament to the epic and crucial manifesting of fear that comes with the knowledge of death; it stands as a mystery of existence. Frost masterfully invites the reader to participate in this inquiry, leaving them to ponder the implications of a universe.
Part 2 – Sonnet
Shadows
Shadows creep undone, whispering in tongue.
A heart is pumping, desolate and alone,
hungry for splendor, for joy’s one song.
An empty vessel where dreams have flown
A longing for hope, a need for light.
To travel wayward, feeling spirits rise,
To grasp at joy, to conquer the darkest Night,
and heed and shadows with questioning eyes,
The shadows creep and mournful whisper sigh,
As fevers drip and splendors start to reek.
With flickering tongues and dreams that swiftly fly,
A vacant vessel where sorrows deeply seep.
So let us hope that dawn will soon appear,
And banish shadows, calming every fear.
Part 3 – Free Form Poem
Shadows
The heart pumps into the Night, beating, thrumming through the shadows that come creeping.
Drumming, it beats through the darkness, and it grasps hold of hope for a brighter ‘morrow.
Empty and alone, a heart goes pumping for hope of tomorrow,
Dire worries and splendor near-forgotten, tongues of unknown whisper sweet desolate nothings
Promising of wishes unseen, unbroken, undone.
The heart pumps into the Night with the hope of the morrow,
Thrumming and drumming, its ravaged tongue lapping at the splendor of hope.
A beat, a rhythm, and the shadows creep—a body weeps.
A heart goes beating, rapping at the cracks that shine a light.
Til hopeful ‘morrow comes, we hope, we pray.
Part 4
When writing in poetic form, one must set a structure, a puzzle deliberately designed. One may think it is merely a matter of aesthetic placement and splashing the superfluous intertwined, but there is so much more. Using the structural puzzle creates a powerful tool arrangement, drawing shapes with meaning, influence, and how the reader interprets the experiences. The divisive ways in which text is structured help drive the impact for the reader.
When contemplating a sonnet, a highly structured form involving fourteen lines, octave, sestet, and iambic pentameter, it takes a deliberate choice of structure and wording to create an argument that resolves itself near the end. An introspection and argument reside within the theme of a Sonnet that cannot be shared with the same intent. There is a concrete place of consideration that delves into exploring the argument.
When considering free-form poetry, the poet can explore freely, almost endlessly. The poet has the freedom to examine from multiple angles, to realign and focus on sensory details, and even the emotional responses that would derive from the poem. In contrast to the structured sonnet form, free-form poetry offers a sense of liberation and inspiration. The sonnet form holds the poet to a set of rules that can’t be realigned to feed its purpose, meaning that the poet needs to contemplate its verbiage and appropriate direction.
In using free form, the result can be more immediate and detail the more profound meaning in a delicate fashion. However, when thinking of rhyme and meter outside of free form, this keeps order and control. With this implication of maintaining the rules of the written poetry, one has a pattern that can convey certainty. That said, free-form can lose this defining set point and be seen as a form of rebellion, uncertainty, and even chaos. It is in the matter and power of the poet in which tools they choose and how their structure will define their motive and impact.
Dream Dark Stories 