"untitled" - A life in poems

An Analysis of "untitled"

untitled is about ripping myself open and looking at what's inside. Metaphorically, that is. What has brought me to this point? Who has influenced me? I took a step back and decided that the best way to do that would be to write short poems about eighteen major points in my life.

First, I wanted everyone to sit on the floor for the reading of my poems. This is because I believe that in order to put yourself in someone else's shoes, you must be out of your own. Therefore, I chose to ask the class to sit on the floor because sitting on the floor is usually not considered normal for college-age students. Getting students to step out of their comfort zone and standard routine is an important step for them to take in order to relate to someone else, or in this case, to relate to me.

The second most important part was that the class needed to read these poems, not me. Me reading the poems would not be nearly as impactful as someone else reading them, especially if that other person does not know me very well. And since I am quiet and don't speak much in class unless I am put into a group, most people in the class do not know me very well at all, which works in my favor. There is something raw and vulnerable about having your life story read aloud by someone else. However, there will be one poem that I myself will read. That is the last poem, which is to symbolize that I am still growing and changing as a person, and that my story is not over.

These poems are incredibly personal. There are eighteen of them, as eighteen corresponds to my current age of eighteen. Each poem tells of an important event or moment in my life so far, such as the birth of my cousin or the death of my grandfather. They alternate between happy and sad, though many of the main events that I remember start off sad and have evolved into happier tones. This in particular shows the personal growth that I went through and the events that led through said growth. In choosing which moments of my life to capture in poetic form, I really had to dig through my memories. The older ones were the hardest to remember, as I have a limited memory in some areas of my life due to high stress or unpleasant events that I have tried to forget. However, I went through a list of around 25 events, and narrowed it down to the full eighteen. All of my poems also end with a period, except for poems 13, 17 and 18, which is to represent that those parts of my story are still ongoing.

I have kept a relatively consistent style of poetic writing for a few years now. I looked at work by authors such as Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, but I felt that the rhyming structure was too stifling. I wanted to write in a way that was more abstract; more fluid with human thought. I wanted it to be coherent but also sporadic, all while still making sense somehow. After realizing that, I slowly created my "style," which is abstract and has line breaks in the middle of thoughts. I believed that the way I cut thoughts in unusual places created complexity and kept the reader on their toes, as the poem would change things up on the reader with the flick of a comma. I've since found that this style is very fun and very expressive, which is why I chose to use it for this narrative. As this is a story about me, I wanted to reflect the patterns of human memory in the ways I structured the lines. I also wanted the font to not add anything to the story itself, because I wanted the words to be the only thing to add definition to my story. At first glance, it seems plain - like me. I played around with a few different fonts, but ended with Arial because it is a standard font and easy to read.

At first, this was not what I wanted my narrative to be about. I thought about revamping an old half-created story I made in 7th grade, and then I wanted to create a new story, and then I thought about a sculpture or painting, and then I realized I already had the perfect material at my fingertips. Poetry has been a medium loved by me since I was in middle school, but I didn't think about using it to write this project until the very end of my thinking process because I associate it with higher thinking and not narrative. However, this is untrue. Poetry can certainly convey a narrative and that's when I had to figure out what my narrative would be about. The idea to use my life as a narrative came to me during class a few weeks ago, in what I can dub an epiphany. I suddenly knew exactly what to do for this project, and I hastily scribbled it down on the rough draft of the last analysis we were turning in. I was hesitant at first to go with my idea, but as I looked into poetry more I realized how well it could convey parts of my life.

While I was writing the poems, I realized I needed a title for them all. As I wrote, I had just been numbering them to eighteen, which I felt worked well. However, I didn't have any overarching title for the entire composition. I ended up titling it untitled because I realized that nothing I titled it would fit just right because of the nature of my narrative. It needed something open to interpretation, much like my story itself. I used this same reasoning when choosing titles for my poems, as I wanted each poem to stand open as well. This is why each poem is titled by a number.

Overall, I had to look into every corner of myself in order to find the words I needed to spill my life story. I rewrote them multiple times and read some of them aloud to my friends because they wanted to hear them. However, many of these have never been read aloud, so my presentation to the class will be the first time these have been read back to me. I am both excited and scared for this to happen, but sometimes you need to stare into yourself to be able to fully grow.