Hello! Thanks for coming to help keep me motivated! I like to pretend to be a poet from time to time and am setting a personal challenge for 2017 to help me stay creative. The poems will be about myself and I would love suggestions and critiques! I plan on making a formal copy to print off when this is finished to put in my library as a trophy --- Challenge: Finish 100 poems and post them on the forum for critique Deadline: December 31st, 2017 --- Post Count: 6 Latest Post: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/moths.151053/ --- Index: Spoiler https://www.writingforums.org/threads/sonnet-for-an-issue.149664/ https://www.writingforums.org/threads/restraining.149773/ https://www.writingforums.org/threads/marcha-funebre.150083/ https://www.writingforums.org/threads/yellow.150205/ https://www.writingforums.org/threads/dayofrage.150648/ https://www.writingforums.org/threads/moths.151053/ not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet not yet
Journal update! I have posted my second poem now. A little behind schedule to where I wanted to be a this time, but the holidays got me busy so I'm not too surprised. The poem was a free writing experiment about the feeling of someone you love touching you. At least how I feel anyway. I went with two revisions before posting so it still feels pretty new, but this challenge is more about producing content than posting finished pieces. I decided to keep a meter, which I personally am against for my poetry, but broke the meter in the final stanza. I wanted to illustrate a feeling of restraining, but wanting to give in, with the first two stanzas. The meter acting the restraining feature that is then broken when the speaker 'gives in' with the last stanza. All-in-all, I'm not too big a fan of this one but I think it could be something better after a few more revisions.
Journal update! I have been rather busy with work as the month of December ended and we moved into January. This time of year I have always felt rather bitter about people who set up goals and never meet them. I also feel rather bitter about how hypocritically people tend to be around this time of year as well. So I wanted to paint a scene of people (moths) being deceived by themselves while thinking they are still in the right. I see this behavior a lot and I would like to explore it further in future poems as well.
Journal Update! Post Number 4! I had the day off from work today and check on what feedback I had gotten from my last entry. Everyone was very helpful so I wanted to post something again today. As such, I spent maybe 10min writing this latest entry. Not the best piece, but I think it had a different tone than what I normally write. Nowhere near as surreal as my other posts. It is much more frank and is actually based on a true experience of mine. In high school the only book I was not allowed to read, as deemed so by my parents, was Farewell to Manzanar. It is a story about a Japanese internment camp in the United States during World War II. I think my parents were trying to protect me. But after reading it later in life I think it would have helped me deal with the subtle racism that I faced growing up. Oddly though, the racism seems so normal that I did realize I was being discriminated in life until I was in college. When I recounted the story of being called into the principles office before taking an IB exam in high school. The principle want to make sure I could past the test, and wanted to know I should have the test ordered in Japanese rather than English to increase the chance of my success. Yea... Anyway, it was a quick poem. Somewhere between surrealism and spoken word.
Journal Update! I have been busy with work a lot the last month and I let my poetry fall behind! As of right now I only have 5 posts done, so I need to complete another 20 poems before the end of March in order to stay on track. That is a lot of poems, and I don't want to quality to dip in an effort to make more poems faster. Anyway, this last poem, #DayOfRage, was about protesters lately. I am all for protesting, and in America I feel like we have a lot to protest about right now. I just don't like how unproductive protests seem to be lately. Lots of people get together in a common goal, and then nothing seems to get done. It's almost sycophantic at this point and there are a lot of people who go just because they can go. There needs to be more doing, and less talking. I used one of Aesop's Fables to paint a simple picture and added a little flavor of my own
Update for entry 6! This month I need to start bringing out some more pieces. 100 poems is a lot and I need to make 19 more for before the beginning of April to stay on track. This piece, I think, is pretty awful. It was more of a free write than a poem but I wanted to get something done. In order to avoid this for the future, I think I am going to make a small series of poems that are connected together. This will allow me to make more pieces while preserving some quality For anyone who read "Moths" I hope you at least enjoyed it.
