Metacognition: Poetry

When I heard that we were going to be writing poetry this year I was much more excited to write poetry than in the past. In middle school we wrote a lot of poems. They were usually something that involved two, maybe three drafts of un-thought out words put together that resembled the work of, well, a kid in middle school. However, this year, when Mr. Allen (you? - I still haven't figured that out) introduced us to the assingment, it sounded very serious, professional and it got me excited. My increased interest in hip-hop and all other genres of music was also a major source of my enthusiasm towards poetry this time around.

The discussion of widowed images threw me off a little bit because I couldn't really come up with any good ones at first. Then, I began thinking about ideas that made me wonder and memories or aspirations I had. I was looking around my room when I spotted my old Pinewood Derby cars upon the shelf and I knew that's what I wanted to write about.

The writing process for me was a little difficult at first. I kept trying to make the poem perfect on my first draft. This always seems to happen to me. This time I tried really hard to follow my mom's advice of simply writing and not being critical. It was easier this time because the poem was not even a page long and it did not take too long to finish. The revisions are probably my favorite part. I love tweaking things to make it sound as floetic as possible. There were a few times when it was difficult to change a line or two but the perfectionist in me would not let me give up untill they were as condense as I could imagine at that time. Hopefully there will be at least one more revision, because I've already spotted a few more things to alter.