Metacognition: Poem

As I was revising my poem I realized that most of the verses I wrote were really overdone, so my goal was to refine the content form of the poem. My poem was centered around two main subjects, music and my cousin. At first, it seemed to start out as two seperate poems because the beginning was devoted to a portrait of my cousin while the later half of the poem was only focused on the music aspect of the story. My main goal was to infuse the music aspect into the poem sooner and gradually make the turn occur.

To eliminate the cliché pieces throughout my poem I changed words so that they became more descriptive. By altering the ambiguous words and making each line original I was able to successfully, I hope, fix all those parts. I found that some actually fixed themselves once I started to shift the direction/focus of the poem. When I started to talk more about the music, the predictable pieces disappeared because I began to fill the places that lacked information. When only talking about my cousin's picture lacked detail and cliches began to form, the music subject would take their places.

I actually ended up erasing the entire first two stanzas of my poem because I felt, although they were detailed and fluid, they didn't fit in with the entire mood of the poem. Those few lines were too solemn while the rest of the poem was more about curiosity and disappointment. Instead of a long introduction, I cut to the chase and the poem was more interesting. This relates to the idea of avoiding starting essays with quotes because the reader is confused. I originally opened with a ton of detail and unnecessary information. Once it was cut out, the poem was more precise and less confusing.

Overall, I think my edits and revisions improved my poem. However, my worst fear is that all the changes that I just explained really impared the poem. I hope that all the changes were for the better.