Rewritting a poem.

In my Creative Writing: Poetry  class we had the assignment of looking through a punch of literary journals and finding two poems we liked.  After we found these two poems, we had to write a poem similar to one of the ones we had found, and we had to write it in the voice of the original author.  Check it out:

Kaleidoscope
By Maria Stanton

She used to think it would be fun to be a piece of colored glass at the end of a child’s kaleidoscope, a tiny part of a bright pattern that shifted every time the amazed kid turned the handle and looked through the eyepiece, but now that she’s in here, a gleaming glass bead, she’s not so sure. Whee! Here they go again! The little beads shake and shimmer against the mirrors, and another gorgeous symmetrical design appears, but she’s beginning to have trouble telling herself apart from the reflections of herself. Is she really up here or down there? Of course it doesn’t matter, she tells herself, it’s the overall impression that counts. …and now she’s spinning again, bumping against other glass beads, part of a new arrangement, and she tells herself she should be proud to be a representative of ephemeral beauty. But why is the kid shaking the kaleidoscope like that? Now he’s banging it against the wall. One of the mirrors breaks. The glass beads spill out, and she rolls under the bed next to a dusty M & M.



(Found on Page 100 of the Denver Quarterly Vol. 42 Num. 2 2008)


First
By Mark Halliday

For me it was Robin Hentz:
In fourth grade and fifth grade she made me tense.

Her beauty was inexplicable and utterly cogent
Like talent;
She reminded me of Prince Valiant.

Robin was quick and dark and small.
On our field trip to the planetarium, to be beside her
And have her see me
Was the thing in the universe that mattered at all.

I don’t know if she moved away
Before I moved away (from Raleigh, NC),
Somehow I don’t recall;
But each of us needs a first discovery
Of the kind of love into which you fall—
Admiration madding and immense—
And for me, it was Robin Hentze.

(Found on pg. 18 of Never Before: An anthology Edited by Laure-Anne Bosselaar)

-----My poem written as Maria Stanton----

Paper Airplane

The hands that created me folded me with care, for distance, speed, and tricks. I dance around the room, elegantly without fault flying passed the cat, hoping it doesn’t jump at me. Dodging the bookshelf, I know that I’m lucky this time. The ceiling fans gusts give me more power, making me soar down the hallway, passed photos of the boy who created me. Here I go, for one last loop making it as fancy as they come. Oh no! He forgot to open his door, my body smashes against my nose, and here I lay, crumpled, wrinkled and used.