Flowers are flowers.

To whom this may concern,

For this creative poetry project, I decided to mimic/recreate the poem “The Rose and The Poppy” by Adrianna Puente but made it a little more modern to today’s society. In my poem, I went along and focused on the speaker in the poem stating that they are a poppy and not a rose. In Adrianna Puente’s poem the speaker talks about the characteristics of a rose including its colors and societal meanings. For example,”I am/ not a ravishing ruby red,/ or a semblance of purity white”(lines 1-3). In my poem, I wanted to be more literal and direct. In my poem it says “I am/ Not a red rose/ Or white rose”(lines 1-3). I thought that being direct would be amusing because poems are usually meant to be indirect and to allow the reader to figure it out. I felt like being more direct made the poem powerful which is similar to Puente’s poem because the tone is powerful as well. In my poem I talked about things that related more to younger generations. For example, “I am beautiful but/ Not enough to be posted on your instagram story.”(lines 15 & 16). I decided to include this line in my poem because the younger generations tend to post things like flowers on social media posts and their instagram or snapchat stories to represent that they are in a relationship. In line 6, it says “Nor am I the symbol of love and the bare minimum-“. Social media has brought more awareness that people should not overly praise things like giving out flowers because it is a part of the bare minimum a lover can do. Puente’s poem is in the free verse form. I decided to stick with the same form because it allowed more freedom of writing. Puente’s poem is about the speaker claiming that she is a poppy and not a rose. I decided to stick with the same idea because I felt like I could connect it to what may seem amusing to the youth audience. I also stuck to the same idea that roses and poppies are still flowers in the end. In the last 4 lines I state how all flowers become dead eventually. It doesn’t matter if the speaker is a rose or poppy, because they have the same fate once they are picked.

Sincerely,

Katherine Deras

An Acceptance of Fate

In Claude McKay’s “The Tired Worker,” the speaker describes someone going to bed after a long hard day at work, only to be re-awoken for another long, hard day. “Outcast,” on the other hand, describes the speaker’s hopelessness of being owned by “the great western world” and having no escape due to having been born “under the white man’s menace.” I believe “Outcast” does represent the hopelessness and despair of the working class speaker in “The Tired Worker.”

Both poems are 14 line sonnets. However, “The Tired Worker” has its turn, or volta, in line 11 with “But what steals…?” while “Outcast” follow the traditional Shakespearean route of having the volta in line 13 with “For I was born”. In the “The Tired Worker,” the speaker still maintains a somewhat defiant tone in saying things like “The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine” and “Peace, O my rebel heart.” This is also reflected in McKay’s decision to place the volta in an unorthodox place. However, the tone shifts after the volta to one of despair over an inescapable fate, in this case having to return to work, with the final lines. On the other hand, the speaker in “Outcast” has resigned him/herself to his/her fate in saying “But the great western world holds me in fee, / And I may never hope for full release.” This poem delves into that despair that appears at the end of “The Tired Worker” and can be interpreted as telling how that same speaker feels during the day. The speaker in “Outcast” then concludes that “[they] must walk the way of life a ghost / Among the sons of earth, a thing apart,” indicating that they believe they will never been equal to the higher classes of people and that “the wretched day” in “The Tired Worker” will never be theirs. Mckay thus hammers these points home by following the rules and placing the volta in “Outcast” in line 13 where it is generally expected in the Shakespearean form. Thus, in a sense, “Outcast” can be read as a continuation of “The Tired Worker” after the speaker wakes up in the morning.

Evan He