Alvarez 1

Amy Alvarez
ENC 1101
David Thacker
28 October 2014

Highway Home
Speeding down the highway going eighty
Just now noticed the tire has gone flat.
Thanks, now our trip has been delayed greatly.
Bradenton we finally arrived at.
When I arrive, only twelve hours pass by
Morning light shines through, filling the dark room
Not even enough time to mutter hi
My emotions are resting in my tomb.
The news that swirls in my head makes no sense
My whole world stops as it sets in my head
My body now filled with all the suspense
The life I used to know and live is dead.
Being miles apart and cant change a thing
All the feelings inside still always sting.

Alvarez 2
Potatoes
So many ways I can be cooked
In all forms I am loved
I can be baked, chopped, fried or mashed.
Enjoyed for every and any meal
Baked is always better for BBQs
You can dress me up
Or dress me down.
Add anything: sour cream, cheese, butter, bacon or chives.
Have me chopped on the side of the main
Season me with herbs and spices.
Fast food joints love me fried
Come out wrinkly or crispy.
Dip me in ketchup
Or sprinkle me with salt.
The best of all is mashed.
So buttery and hot
Top me with gravy.
Eat me with turkey.
Anyway I am served Im always good;
Baked, chopped, fried or mashed
Always delicious no matter what

Alvarez 3
The Rink
Just arrived from the store.
My roommate whips something out;
Her great steal of the day,
A ginormous sharpie.
Excitedly she pops off the cap
The aroma of the sharpie
Stings my nose and permeates the room.
A familiar scent
Sending me spiraling
I stand there still and patient
Underneath me ice
I glance around
Feeling back at home
The cold strikes me,
But I dont mind
Now I am skating around.
The ice rink full of familiar faces.
Following the pattern,
Drawn in black sharpie
Scattered across the ice
Following advice from my coach
Jumping and twirling left and right
Gliding along the black lines.
Exhilaration and joy
Both overcome my body.
The Rink
Is my home.

Alvarez 4
Forever Dancing
The wind picks up
Blowing the clothes they wear
The damp sand isnt a bother
Umbrellas shielding from the storm
Dark and gloomy
The sky is speaking
Booming
Grumbling
Music fills the humid sky
The butler singing beautiful lyrics
Man and woman dancing to the beat
Red dress
The elegance it portrays
Not tainted by the rain
No shoes to match
But not a care
Man leading
Dressed in black
Poised while dancing
Dancing
Till the end of time

Alvarez 5
Process Memo
For this assignment I was required to write four poems. Each poem took on a
new structure/topic. The four styles of poetry that were required to write were, a sonnet,
concrete, memory, and ekphrastic poem. I am not a poet by any means and I ran into
many obstacles while trying to develop each of my poems. Through out this process I
was able to learn how to make my poems better. Also, I learned that there are different
ways to write poems; its not just the basic form you have to follow. Not all poems have
to rhyme; it could be the way you think makes the poem sound the best and interesting.
My first poem I had to write was a sonnet. From there my poems got slightly
easier to write, maybe it was because I started with the hardest one. In the past I have
only ever written one sonnet and I struggled greatly while writing it. Due to this I think it
made writing this poem slightly easier, because I was familiar with the structure, but it
was still very difficult. Most sonnets rhyme so I decided to make my sonnet rhyme. By
having it rhyme I feel as if it reads more like a sonnet than just a paragraph.
The structure of the sonnet following the 14 lines, 10 syllables in each line, and
the rhyming were definitely the hardest part. Most of the lines that I would think of were
only 8 or 9 syllables, when the line had to be 10 syllables. To help me out with this
problem, I made sure that I was counting the syllables correctly by checking the words
online for their syllable count. As far as the external structure goes I attempted to make
the lines stressed-unstressed to give it more of the characteristics of a sonnet.
The easiest part was to pick my topic. The topic that I chose for my poem was a
personal topic so I knew a lot about the topic and how I felt about it. My topic had to
deal with my trip back home from the summer C term at FSU and finding out that my dad

Alvarez 6
was going to move out of my house. I made some changes to make some parts of the
poem more specific. In the poem I added the destination Bradenton in the poem
instead of destination, so the reader knew where I was headed. I purposely left it so
that the reader isnt 100% clear as to what the situation as a whole was. The reasoning
for this is because I couldnt effectively communicate everything in only 14 lines and I
do keep a lot of personal things to myself.
For the concrete poem we were able to write a poem about an object; the object
could also be a food. That being said I chose to write my poem about potatoes. I chose
to write about potatoes, because they are my favorite food and there are so many different
ways you can cook them. The way I wrote the poem, I dedicated one stanza to each way
that the potato is cooked. I also have some sort of intro and conclusion to the poem. The
intro discusses the different ways the potato can be cooked, and the conclusion stays that
they are delicious any way you eat them.
The speaker of the poem is the potato itself, so it is written in a 1st person
perspective. By doing this it made the poem more interesting because the speaker wasnt
someone looking at the potato writing it. I personified the potato. The lines You can
dress me up/ or you can dress me down, give a good example of personification.
Obviously you arent going to dress up a potato, but its a metaphor, dress it up or down
as in toppings. In this poem I used many verbs. I did this because it makes sense due to
the perspective it was written in. This poem really allowed me to use a good amount of
active verbs as well. I included active verbs such as wrinkly, crisp, and sprinkle to
add sensory detail. Although I didnt rhyme in my poem it still sounds lyrical. The way
it reads, reads nicely. I used repetition at the beginning and the end of my poem, baked,

Alvarez 7
chopped, fried, or mashed, is what I repeated. The tone of this poem is humorous,
because it is about potatoes.
The memory poem was one of my favorites to write. I thought a neat technique to
do was what Trenthewey did in Monument. She introduced a scene at the beginning of
watching ants and the ants are what triggered the memory of the cemetery. I did roughly
the same thing, but with a scent instead of a sight. I used the smell of a sharpie that
triggered the memory of ice skating practice.
In this specific poem I focused more on trying to paint a picture using all the
senses. When I talk about the ice skating rink I talk about it being cold and the
familiar faces. The familiar faces are my ice skating friends who I havent seen in a
while. I relate back to the sharpie when I say Following the pattern, / Drawn in black
sharpie/ Scattered across the ice. My ice skating coach used to draw directions and
symbols on the ice when I would practice for competitions as a guideline. I remember
the smell being so pungent, because the sharpie was not your average sharpie size.
I attempted to use active verbs as much as I could in this poem. Some active
verbs that I used were I did not use a rhyme scheme for this particular poem to make it
easier to write. However, if I used a rhyme scheme my poem could have possibly been a
bit more effective. From the rough draft I changed up where I placed some of my lines
to make the poem sound better. I think where I placed them now is also a bit more
stratigical and makes more sense. I also tried to add a little bit more detail about how I
felt when I was back in the rink after a fairly long time. I tried to connotate the ice rink
as my home, because thats where I felt like I belonged.

Alvarez 8
Lastly, the ekphrastic poem turned out to be my favorite overall. I just really like
the simplicity of the way it turned out. The poem is based off one of my favorite
paintings; The Singing Butler, by Jack Vettriano. In the poem I illustrated what is
happening in the painting instead of stating my emotions toward it. For this poem, I
didnt change much for my final, because I was pretty content with my original. I like
how it makes me feel like I am in the painting. I can almost hear the butler singing and
the sky booming and grumbling. I related the clothing that the two main people are
wearing to what I believe them to be like. The red dress being elegance and the guy
dressed in black being poised. I feel as if this poem was easier to write connecting to
the senses, because it was based off a painting that I was looking at to help me see what
was going on.
Overall, I am content with all four of my poems, especially for not having written
many poems in my life. I chose to write my poems from different views to challenge
myself and to make the poems more enjoyable. Out of all of them poems I have written I
think that my most entertaining one was either the concrete or the ekphrastic poem. The
reasoning for this is because they are sillier than my other two poems. My sonnet has
more of a serious tone, which is what I was trying to do. I think that each one of my
poems compliments each other because they are different topics and different poem
styles.