McKenzie Frey Senior Thesis December 10, 2013 Writer Development 2010-2014 I started reading when I was three.

I didnt know letters and words, but, after endless begging, my parents had read my favorite stories to me until I had them memorized. I could pull a book off my shelf, open it to any page, and start reciting the rest of the story based on the pictures. In later years, my reading level was always much higher than my classmates and my teachers often complimented my spelling and grammar. By the time I enrolled at Loras College, I had pre-established a solid literary and linguistic basis. My parents didnt realize it at the time, but their early literary influence was the beginning to my future in writing. Although I entered Loras with a predilection for English literary concepts, I did not officially declare myself as an English major until my sophomore year. Instead, I spent my freshman year attempting psychology classes, theological studies, and elementary education. These courses were informational and pedagogical, but I wasnt passionate towards the fields of study. I did, however, notice that the scores I received for my writing were significantly better than other scores I received in those classes. College Writing finally influenced me to pursue the English Creative Writing major and later the Literature major and Publishing minor. I admit I did not begin the foundational course with strong writing skills, but I did possess basic knowledge necessary to produce a coherent paper: start with an attention-grabbing opening statement, end the introduction with a thesis, have organized body paragraphs, and conclude with a revision of the important topics and a memorable ending statement. My College Writing professor, Charlotte Ulve, was an incredible

mentor and beyond passionate about the English language. Her eyes would shine when she lectured the class about how to properly cite in MLA format and how to appropriately utilize a quote, etc. The personal and reflective pieces I wrote in Dr. Ulves course sparked my interest and I found peace and comfort in expressing myself on paper. I had anticipated receiving high praise for the first draft I submitted in this course, but was reluctant to find that I had just as many mark-ups on my draft as the rest of my peers in the class. I remember red through long sentences and circles indicating where I needed to insert a citation or expand on a topic. At first, I felt frustrated seeing all the red comments and suggested deletions, but was determined to prove that I could write better. In hopes of improving my writing, I was diligent in studying the assigned readings for College Writing and when questions were asked in class discussion, I was one of few who actively participated in answering correctly. After another draft had undergone revision, I found that I had improved, but still needed to strengthen certain areas of my piece. Instead of struggling on my own, I approached Dr. Ulve after several of my classes and asked her for suggestions on how I could further improve my drafts. I found that I enjoyed the art of writing and knowing that the English language is never static. I could write the same concepts in multiple phrases and descriptions and each had its own magic to it. Thats what I discovered my essays needed: sentence variety. Well-written pieces were magical and intriguing. Several drafts and final essays later, I received my first A on my college transcript for College Writing. Spring 2011, I declared English Creative Writing as my major. Fall Semester 2011, I enrolled in my first English course: Poetry Writing. Prior to Dr. Pollocks course, I had little experience writing poetry. Of course, I had written in rhyme scheme and I had encountered E.E. Cummings poem, I Carry You in My Heart, but other than

haikus and rhyming couplets, my knowledge of poetry was slim-to-none. I remember trying to come up with three of my favorite poets on the first day of class and only two came to mind: Edgar Allen Poe and Shel Silverstein. Yup, I was definitely going to learn a few things from this coursethe first being: the best writers are those who imitate others writing styles. I did not grasp the literal concept of this idea until later. My first assignment in Poetry Writing was to write an observational poem without worrying about form, style, etc. At the time, I was fascinated by hamsters, so I wrote my first piece about a hamster with a wild imagination, running on a wheel. When I finished my first real poetic piece, I was to draw a picture of my topiclets just say Im not an Art major for a reason. Presenting The Hamster in my poetry workshop, I received more positive feedback than I initially expected: people found pleasure reading about my hamsters adventures and they admired the lines Its a kind of intimate relationship he has with his wheel,//Knowing it will take him nowhere,//Yet he is still escaping. After receiving high praise for my first nonrhyming poem, I felt my confidence increaseI was a poet. The second poetic assignment was to research any topic of interest and write a poem based on my findings. I had a dying Pathos hanging in my room that lacked water and sunlight, so I decided to write about the pathetic plant. Throughout my research, I discovered many plant terms that struck my interest such as rhizome, rachis, phloem, and midrib. I loved the way these words slid off my tongue when I said them aloud, but incorporating the exotic wordage into my poem was not enough. I sought a dictionary online and spiced up simple words like stubborn, dying, and alive with words such as persistent, floundering, and glabrous. Unlike The Hamster, Devils Ivy did not receive an overly-enthusiastic reaction from my class. Instead, they found it difficult to comprehend the strange vocabulary and felt that

I needed to eliminate most of the technical terms. I was frustrated at my peers for having no ambition to learn new words and I thought they failed to see the dedication I had offered to this poem, but with a tight jaw, I grinned and accepted their comments. When I submitted my final revision of Devils Ivy, I kept the plant terminology regardless of the criticism I had received: You persistent, perennial pioneer,//You with your pendulous assembly of simple leaves,//How have you survived your exclusive drought?//Soak up and rehydrate your roots, your rhizome, and your rachis!... This was my poem and I was proud of the work I had put into the piece, so I was going to keep it the way I liked. The poetry workshops influenced my development as a writer by providing my peers the opportunity to focus on my pieces and offer suggestions and comments about what was wellwritten and what might be revised. The roundtable discussions allowed for extensive, in-depth analyses of all poems written amongst the class, which I found helpful, because each author wrote in his/her own unique perspective. Being able to read and analyze several poems each day in class allowed me the opportunity to learn actively and to better understand the basic concepts of poetry, while recognizing the positive and negative effects of well-written or poorly-written pieces. Aside from the poetry workshops I had the opportunity to present a chapter from the required course textbook, Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry by David Mason and John Frederick Nims. I chose to review Chapter Six: Machine for Magic, and I spoke to the class about living wordswords through which the image and emotion are expressed (Mason and Nims). An example of this term comes from Kenneth Patchens Moon, Sun, Sleep, Birds, Live: I am the cave and the light//The watch God keeps//When His children go mad (Mason and Nims). Other terms that arose in my presentation included denotation, connotation,

clichs, and diction. By presenting this material to my class, I was better able to understand the poetic concepts that I was studying. By the time I finished my first poetry course, I had discovered that poetry was more than rhyming couplets and nursery songs. Poetry had become observations, imagination, and intense emotions bound and divided by stanzas and caesuras and alliteration. Poetry was more: couplets, quatrains, enjambments, assonance, consonance, allusions, prose, meter, feet, etc. Now, my poetry was supposed to speak to my audience whether in questions, imperatives, or direct address. Before I had the opportunity to take Advanced Poetry, I enrolled in the J-term course Revision, Editing, and Publishing. Having only one writing course under my belt, I braved the class filled with juniors and seniors and focused on revising a few of the pieces I had written from my Poetry Writing course. My poem, Prisoner was one of the pieces that underwent extensive revision throughout the duration of this three-week course. In the original Prisoner, many of my ideas were abstract and under-developed. For example, I wrote, When you are a broken robot;//When cruelty and nonchalance skip together hand-inhand down a path that leads directly to you Then rebel against your detention Then gather up your beaten self and liberate your enemy, the zombie-dog;//And end your abstract mental paradise and vamoose for real to a concrete haven. Prior to the Revision, Editing, and Publishing course, I hadnt noticed how incomprehensible and strenuous Prisoner was to read. I remember being asked, What does this mean? and I couldnt explain my own poem. How could I call myself a poet when I couldnt even comprehend my own work? The first roundtable discussion of my poetry collection opened my eyes. For the first time, I was analyzing my own work and I was forced to do so ruthlessly. I

had a lot to learn about how to write coherently and with concrete images. I failed to compose concrete images in several drafts before I finally realized that I couldnt rely on ambiguous nouns and adjectives to convey my ideas. After daily workshops with positive encouragement to expand on and clarify the incoherent aspects within my pieces, my poetry collection endured one final extensive line-by-line analysis. By the time J-term 2012 was over, Prisoner had developed into a comprehensible poem with concrete images and ideas: Pillows traumatized from watching reruns of nightmares; A robot, you activate when cleaning or cooking is necessary, The prison-guard used to play with your hair, laugh at your jokes, and compliment your chocolate eyes. a shattered cheek-bone, black eye, and bruised ribs; to distract the guard...

In addition to the workshops and extensive line-by-line revisions, the Revision, Editing, and Publishing course allowed me the opportunity to read other genres written by my peers. Delving into flash-fiction, creative non-fiction, screenplays and more, I found myself gaining knowledge about how to write well-constructed scene and character description, how to properly convey dialogue, and how to read with resistance. Peer reviews were a great way for me to actively engage with my peers written work and I discovered the importance of reading critically and asking questions of parts that were not completely comprehensible. Reviewing my peers work allowed me the opportunity to discover how I needed to improve in my own pieces. The skills I learned in my J-term course became beneficial throughout the rest of my writing courses at Loras as I continued to pursue more creative writing classes. Instead of being afraid to offer constructive criticism of my peers work and rather than feeling humiliated when I received harsh criticism of my own work, I found that I was more comfortable with in-class workshops, knowing that I was not alone in being incapable of creating a perfect first draft.

Likewise, I discovered that I was better able to advance my skills as a writer by understanding the importance of writing detailed, coherent pieces without using too much exposition or dialogue. I enrolled in my first Advanced Poetry course in my spring semester of 2012. Much like the introductory poetry course, this class was designed as a workshop/roundtable discussion of the different poems students enrolled in the course wrote. Advanced Poetry required a book called The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry in which numerous, world-wide poets had their work translated into English. My first assignment was to write an imitation poem based on one of the poems in this poetry anthology. I chose Marina Tsvetaevas Poems for Blok, in which she presented an ode of a lovers name. For example, she wrote, Your name is abird in my hand,//a piece of ice on my tongue.//The lips quick opening,//Your namefive letters.//A ball caught in flight, a silver bell in my mouth. (Kaminsky 62). Since I didnt want to copy Tsvetaevas tone, I chose to twist my imitation into a much less pleasant version. For example, I wrote Your name is asnake around my throat,//a thistle on my tongue.//Your namesix letters.//A squirrel shot in flight,//a brass zipper in my mouth. My peers enjoyed the version of Tsvetaevas poem and they encouraged me to write more imitations. After experimenting with this style of writing, I discovered the meaning behind the notion that the best writers are those who imitate others. My poem Your Name after Marina Tsvetaeva won the Limestone Review Alpha Award and placed second in the DES National Writing Contest. I was surprised that this piece was so well-liked, and the high praise I received was a welcome experience. I felt I had gained a deeper understanding of poetry by simply imitating anothers work.

In addition to the poetry workshops, I found the small research assignments to be highly beneficial. These assignments were simpledefinitions, historical backgrounds, and notable examples of poetic schemes, tropes, forms, etc.and taken mostly from Wikipedia. After having completed the research, these assignments were distributed throughout the class to be used as tool-kits for our poetry writing. I found this tool-kit useful in that I could quickly create my own poetic assignments without relying on Dr. Pollock. The second assignment I was asked to attempt in Advanced Poetry was that of writing with a specific scheme. I chose to combine the scheme of direct address linked with satire and the research assignment from the poetry introduction course. Instead of plants, I chose to write about an insectthe cockroach. After researching the characteristics and traits of cockroaches, I came up with my second published piece, To the American Cockroach. This poem was an original piece of work that I created from my first self-assigned poetry assignment. Instead of imitating another author, I was able to produce a satirical invitation to a cockroach and his friends, for example, Please, come in//and dont forget to invite your friends://the Brownbanded and the Germans.//Let them stay for cheese, beer,//and flakes of dead skin. The second semester I took Advanced Poetry was in the spring of 2013. This course was similar to the previous Advanced Poetry course, but the assignments differed in that each assignment focused on more than one scheme, trope, form, etc. Instead, the first assignment continued to be the imitation poem, the second assignment a scheme poem, the third a scheme and trope poem, the fourth a scheme, trope, and form poem, etc. This change in the assignment requirements challenged me as a poet. Rather than focusing my attention on one specific style and form, I was to compose poems with several poetic forms at once. Additionally, I realized that I was influenced by many more poets than I initially knew when I began my Poetry Writing

course, such as Constantine P. Cavafy, William Wordsworth, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Pablo Neruda, Eavan Boland, and many others. My poem Bedtime Inferno from my thesis collection attempted to successfully portray free-verse, meditation, assonance, consonance, and allusion, but I was forced to break away from the trope of allusion, because it wasnt working in my piece. Consonance is appropriately conveyed in the line blistering gasoline blankets and the poem is a meditation or confession of a woman who burns her marriage bedroom. This particular poem was influenced by fiction writings, because I had hoped to make a story out of it at some point in the future. The challenge of writing this piece was attempting to correlate the different poetic forms, but in being challenged I found a deeper appreciation for those poets such as William Wordsworth and William Blake who can write in rhyme and meter and form all at the same time. I admit that I do not have strong skills in meter and form, but maybe that it something that I could work on as I work toward the future. Overall, the poetry courses, the Revision, Editing, and Publishing course, and other skills gained throughout various literature courses, such as Romantic Age Literature, Irish Literature, American Literature, African American Literature, etc., over my past few years at Loras have shaped my writing into the style I hone today. While I was a fair-to-mediocre writer when I arrived at Loras, I feel that I have significantly improved since declaring myself an English major. Although I am still working to strengthen the writing in my thesis, I am feeling much more confident in knowing that I have a deep, eclectic understanding and passion for poetry.

Works Cited Kaminsky, Ilya and Susan Harris. The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010. Print. Mason, David and John Frederick Nims. Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2000. Print.