Reflection Essay

1991 Words4 Pages

My initial intrigue with poetry began due its musical nature. I value the coupling of figurative language and ambiguity to communicate emotions and personal experiences in a distinct, original way. In the past, I have written poems and lyrics as a means of sorting my thoughts and dealing with overwhelming emotions. Entering the course, I knew my struggles would not lie as much in writing poetry, but rather, through deciphering the meanings and messages behind others’ poems. Throughout high school, I questioned my ability to annotate poems and write about them in an academic format. In my self-assessment, I identified my greatest writing weakness as “my inability to be concise” because "I think of numerous ways to express [an idea or thought] and have trouble narrowing it down to a single one” (citation). Throughout the semester, I have become an efficient editor, revising my papers …show more content…

Partially, I think this is due to the fact that I chose to write on Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Boy Died in My Alley,” which is one of my favorite poems. Also, I used Linda Koolish’s interpretation of the poem as my opposing argument source because I agreed with certain aspects of what she said, but mainly found that she “focuses too much on the individual incident and not enough on the overarching issue of violence that Brooks’ is addressing” (citation). Overall, I was more confident in my ability to interact with the argument source, respond to what was Koolish’s interpretation, and refute it with my own observations and interpretation of Brooks’ poem. In the feedback I received from Professor Tandon, he noted, “your engagement with the argument source [could] be more nuanced. Your analysis [could] be more consistently insightful. Your argumentative structure [could] be sharper and your prose style more concise” (citation). Despite these notes, my paper earned an A-, showing that I had made improvements from Paper

Open Document