Metacognition: My Original Poem

Out of all the tasks I've had to undertake in English so far, none has been more involving than the process of writing my original poem.  It was an arduous task requiring a multi-step process.

The first step required me to think of at least three great moments and five widowed images (images that stick in your head because you don't understand them) in order to supply creative material for my poem.  Some of these ideas came easily, while others were hard.  I definitely found the widowed images portion of the first step challenging, because the images were not always at the top of my conscious.  Out of the many ideas I came up with, I ended up choosing to write about waking up on the weekends.

The second step was to create the first draft of the poem. This draft was a small, barebones version of the final poem.  Only a couple stanzas, this poem was nothing compared to my final poem.  When I wrote the poem, I thought it was pretty good, but upon looking back at it, I now realize it was not enough.

The third step was very big for me.  It required me to completely overhaul the poem that I had created for the second step.  My poem ended up growing from one page to almost two whole pages.  My small poem about the weekend turned into a narrative telling about the crummy week of an anonymous narrator and how he desires for the weekend to come.  This was a large change, and I discovered that it added new dimension to my poem.  In my opinion, this was the most important step of all.

The fourth and final step required me to "hold on a moment" and focus on some of the more important moments in my poem.  There were some important areas where it was easy to hold on a moment and make my poem better.  I never realized how many great moments there were in my poem.  Sometimes you don't really know everything about your own creations; you sometimes create things unconsciously.

With such an expansive multi-step process, it's no surprise that writing my poem was such an involving process, and my poem wouldn't be so good without it.