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Introduction-

Welcome to Belles-Lettres. I've put together a few pieces of work that I especially enjoyed this year. These pieces included works from myself and a few other people in class. I want to let you know a little about each poem and why I have chosen it.  All of the poems that I have included deal with Image. They, at least to myself, create a powerful image in my mind and I hope that you may all take away something from each piece. Most of all, I hope you enjoy my final project.

Her Lover's Muse

This is a poem that the River Bluff Review decided to publish this year. Ultimately, this poem is about how a woman is treated about society. My favorite lines of this poem are "hair of bracken and brambles/hurriedly brushed to hide his early morning rambles/her skin radiated softly/from her face to her dark leather sandals". I love the 'h' sounds in those lines; they soften the poem up even though the ultimate picture is ugly. The woman in the poem is ashamed of what society has done to her, but she never tries to stop or to change her life. 

Love Affair in a Library

This poem has come along way since my first draft. It paints a picture of a man in a library who becomes enraptured with a picture of a goddess. You don't know which goddess it is but it's implied that she is Greek. You get a picture of the power that the goddess holds over him and how much he mentally worships her.

Miss Minnie Kettle Lets Off Some Steam

This dialogue depicts a Southern black woman's anger towards some neighbor children who have trampled her flowers. You should to be able to infer from the language that she's angry but also that she is a comical character. She 

One Eyed Poetess

This is a very personal piece that I wrote last year. It describes me. That's really all I want to say about this piece. I wanted to include it because to me, it's not only about me it's about apart of me that is quite painful.

Youth

This poem has a lot of great images in it and that's the only reason I'm including it. I wrote this on the first day of class when Joel was talking about Blackboard. I just had to write it; it was really bugging me. Sorry, Joel. 

I Am

Now, this is one of my favorite poems that I have done. Why? Because it's all about the empowering female. She's a rowdy, arrogant character in her own right and this poem paints that picture perfectly.

Social Remix Revolution

This poem started as one line that constantly bugged me for days. It just kept repeating through my head so I had to right it down. The rest just flowed with it. It creates a nice little picture of a girl who is angry with her boyfriend because she feels that he is better than she is.

The She-Cat

Loosely based on my own cat, the she-cat is a little vignette of a dying cat.

Wladyslaw's Eyes

Pronounced Vladic, Wladyslaw's Eyes is from a series of Holocaust poems that I wrote in high school. The images portrayed here need no explanation.

She sits in a night cafe

Lindsey Harston wrote this poem and it is one of my favorites from the class. It paints a great picture of a woman who thinks she has missed too much in life and regrets everything. You get natural feeling from this poem and I love that.

Channel Surfing

Amber Meyer wrote this poem and to me this poem portrays many different types of people, all of them religious; yet it unifies them the same way it makes them different. I can see many different people speaking about God. Their beliefs are apparent in each stanza and that makes me see them.

This is the end....

I'll be honest, I've not changed so greatly in my writing. I came into this class as a serious writing and while I leave this class with a little more knowledge and a few friends, I still am a serious writer. All the criticism has helped but it hasn't changed me as a writer. The exercises were fun but none of them were over-the-top and I think that is what I wanted the most. As a person, I enjoyed this class immensely.

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