Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Explaining my attempt at writing a modernist poem

After spending a lot of time looking up what modernism was, I still wasn't satisfied enough to write a short story. I absolutely love poetry and saw that there was pretty good modernist poems out there. I really enjoy Edgar Allan Poe's poetry and through today's research, I found he was a modernist. That inspired me to give a try at writing a poem instead of a poem.
So what I found about modernism:
Modernists write self-consciously or from the inner self. Since they were writing from a stream of consciousness, they would use symbols and imagery to represent what they felt. Instead of seeing progress in the world, modernist saw no change or even it getting worse.
For example, in the Great Gatsby the author used the eyes as a symbol of God looking down upon American society and how things have only gone worse.
Another example is in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, where he begins with an epilogue of him being in hell and how he feels like his life on Earth is hell. Or him wanting to be a pear of ragged claws in an empty sea so he can feel like no one is judging him.

So when I sat to write my poem, I wrote from a stream of consciousness. Whatever feelings I had built up and passed through my mind, I wrote down.
As imagery, I wrote that there were no colors in the world. I feel like that made everything dark and gloomy. Kind of a down feeling, but that's what I was striving for.
The dark clouds where a symbol for negative thoughts that are impossible to get rid of and feeling cold/numb all the time.
I choose the character to be a butterfly because butterflies are already weak as it is so having to fly in the rain is kind of making her weaker.
Time yelling at her ear is the feeling of wanting to do something before time runs out but not being able to do it because the dark clouds are weighing her down.
Lastly the predator and prey bit was about how the butterfly thought every living being that laid eyes on her were predators who wish to prey on her because she is so weak. This means that she feels constantly judged, no matter how much she tries not to feel that way because the dark clouds are pouring water down, thus making her weaker and forcing her to not know what to do.

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