#2 (The Daffodils)

The Daffodils by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

(http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15925)

I decided to share this poem because it was one of the first poems that I ever studied back in middle school when I was first introduced to poetry. I think about this poem every spring, and think that it is a beautiful representation of the beauty that is a daffodil.

#1 (On revision...)

I've been thinking about revision a lot this week as I prepared my final workshop materials in preparation for my final project. The main revision that I would like to focus on is for "The ones who love you." I got a lot of comments on my revised draft that people loved the changes that I made, so that was great to see. Obviously, the most noticeable change was in the overall formatting. I kept the anaphora, but decided that establishing one instance and then either supporting or undermining that instance would be a more exciting engagement with the reader than the original one-liners. The hardest part for me came when establishing the rhythm and rhyme of the piece. I had some inherent in the first draft, and then was able to add some to the beginning of the second to make it a somewhat standardized pattern. However, I ran into issues when I liked the phrasing of some of the retorts later in the piece and couldn't rephrase them without sounding forced. After struggling with this for awhile, I decided to surrender the second draft as it was, with a rearranged form and an incomplete sound. In order for this poem to feel complete to me, I will need to either add the sounds where they are required or take all of the sounds out. This is all to say that I have definitely learned that the revision process is not something easily done. It is more akin to lions fighting over a scrap of meat, except both of the lions embody two opposing views of the writer, and the meat could be as small as a comma or as large as an entire poem. Either way, revision is brutal.

#1 (A Musical Elegy)

During the first time that I wasn't intently listening for an elegy in musical form, I managed to hear one. Flipping through my iTunes, I stumbled across "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan. This song simply sounds like an elegy, with its deep rises and falls in her voice, and the peaceful instrumental accompaniment. Of course, the lyrics also clue the listener in, especially with the repeated images of Heaven. I remember that this song always used to make me cry when I heard it on the radio. Very shortly after September 11th, I heard this song used as a backdrop for the famous words of the news stations and President during and after the events unfolded. The song became epic to me because it was used as a tribute to those lost in this tragedy. I know that many poems also became memorialized at this time for similar reasons. When writing my elegy, I found it very hard to pick the write words. I wanted to just splurt out whatever came to my head first when dealing with intense emotions, which, of course, would not have made an excellent poem. I think it is truly the most gifted poets, writers, and musicians that are capable of successfully writing such emotional pieces because they are able to express the emotion in a real way without hyperbolizing it. The talented expression of emotion makes "Angel" such a beautiful song.