The Poetry Project
Project Description
This year for Humanities our final project was a poetry unit were our goal was for each of us to have a polished poem and in preparation we learned about different poetic devices poets and styles of poetry, with the goal that at the end we would have not only a polished poem but one with a strong message and impactful emotional tone.
Poem/ Artiest Statement
A Bittersweet Ode
I have an ode for you, but it is not one of praise nor glory. I shall not cast it in gold but rather burn it with coal,
For oh do I have an ode for you, one performed with venom laced edges and silver tipped tongues,
For odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
for you say his hair shines
and his muscles are full of might,
that he slayed the dragon
but he's never seen it scales,
then tell me his heart is gold
when it quickly turns to shale.
But your praise of this knight falls upon
deaf ears who don’t care for slander or lies.
So oh, do I have an ode for you made of rotten apples and cinnamon cider that burned like fire,
I have an ode for you that smells like dead flowers mixed with copper on the wind of a blistering summer day,
for this is an ode for you of things once thought sweet and turned bitter, lost of all glory,
but no longer thought of as quite so ordinary.
Illyria Brunner
Poetry has been a part of me and my life for as long as I can remember, and I don’t mean as a hobby or a guilty pleasure. No poetry is my voice and my understanding friend.
See, when I don’t know what to say my poetry does. When I don’t feel understood poetry shows me that I am understood and so when I started this project I thought I knew exactly what I wanted my poem to be. I had this whole plan for doing a poem on how I grew up and how it got me where I am now. Though, it turns out I hate writing about myself, and not only that but I hate trying to edit my life into something people want to read and hear about. So after that realization, which took a total of one class period and a shitty draft, I spent the next hour sitting on the floor thinking of what my next steps were going to be and came up with nothing. Not a stanza, a word or coma, just a blank screen and me angrily slamming my computer shut which turned out to be what I needed once I put pen to paper I suddenly had a poem but this poem's meaning was one I didn’t know,
The next week I had eight lines. I was in love with it and I couldn't wait for people to read it, but it was still missing something. A meaning. And in a pursuit to try to remedy this I ran my poem by as many teachers as I could to ask them what my poem made them feel and what they thought it meant. Not one of them gave me the answers I was looking for. They only told me what I already knew. This made me want to yell, "I am trying! Don’t you see I am trying?" But instead, I thanked them for their time and went to mope in a corner. It turns out corners are magic because it is where I found the meaning I’d been looking for.
You see while mopping in the corner I thought back to my first attempt at my poem and the feeling of resentment I had toward it. I went back to my current poem and realized it was an ode, but I did not glorify anything in it, I simply showed both sides of the story and that was when I knew my poem was bound to be a bitter-sweet ode, unlike anything I had written before.
Growth as a Poet Reflection
I would say my poem/ode has a clear meaning now but at the start it didn’t because I did not actually know what inspired me to write it one minute I was sitting on the floor and the next I had the base of my poem and even thought I didn’t know the meaning behind it I kept adding on knowing/ hoping the mean would become clear alone the way and eventually in the middle of math class it did, I realized each line had something in come it showed the other side of what we as a society seem to glorify and that when I decided my ode was meant to show that other side.
Yes, my ode use many poetic devices to communicate it massage but the ones I use the most used thought are Onomatopoeia, Metaphor, Alliteration, Repetition, irony which help it convey it message in a way in which it can sink into it listeners
I wouldn’t say the perspective has a change from my first draft to my final draft more like it has become more clear from then to now you can see in my first draft here (for this is an ode for you of thing once thought sweet and turned bitter lots of all glory but no longer thought of as quite so ordinary.) this last line is both in my first draft and my final ode but the buildup that made it impactful didn’t happen till later because even thought this line holds power it is useless if you don’t know what it's saying so in my final draft is where you get the back around info for that
last line to be impactful
Here:
(for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary, )
For you say his hair shines
and his muscles are full of might,
that he slayed the dragon
but he's never seen it scales
then tell me his heart it gold
when it quickly turn to shill.
but your praise of this knight fall upon
deaf ear who don’t care for slander nor lies,
In my first draft, it was 7 line long with a meaning I did not yet know. A week later it had it. Meaning, but the buildup was severely lacking and that didn't change till critic with my peers see wall at they time I had slowly been adding to the middle of the ode so the message could get across to my listener better but it seemed weak to me and didn’t quiet match but after I talk it out with them I realized wall I didn’t like the phrasing they have my listener agree it was a start to make the massage come across it just need a little refinement and that exactly what it got it when from this (for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
For oh do i sleep when you praise his might for the fifth time in one night) to this
(for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
For you say his hair shines
and his muscles are full of might,
that he slayed the dragon
but he's never seen it scales
then tell me his heart it gold
when it quickly turn to shill.
but your praise of this knight fall upon
deaf ear who don’t care for slander or lies,) in a day and completely transform how my poems impact land.
Three of the biggest changes I made throughout this project were going from nothing in the middle to this( for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
For oh do i sleep when you praise his might for the fifth time in one night) then editing and change this to this ((for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
For you say his hair shines
and his muscles are full of might,
that he slayed the dragon
but he's never seen it scales
then tell me his heart it gold
when it quickly turns to shale.
but your praise of this knight fall upon
deaf ear who don’t care for slander or lies,)
Then honestly the most important changes I made with the small this like changing the line ( and cider that burned like fire on a wintry night) to (and cinnamon cider that burns like fire)
And change it so that not every line started with the same word but still conveyed the same meaning
As I talk about in my last paragraph it was both the little changes and the small one I made through this project that made my poem the impactful piece it is now not only adding what I did to the middle but also adding the right line brakes and proper inflection it convey a surest emotion in that part allowing my reader/listen to fully connect with my work improving it over all experience.
Yes, my ode use many poetic devices to communicate it massage but the ones I use the most used thought are Onomatopoeia, Metaphor, Alliteration, Repetition, irony which help it convey it message in a way in which it can sink into it listeners
I wouldn’t say the perspective has a change from my first draft to my final draft more like it has become more clear from then to now you can see in my first draft here (for this is an ode for you of thing once thought sweet and turned bitter lots of all glory but no longer thought of as quite so ordinary.) this last line is both in my first draft and my final ode but the buildup that made it impactful didn’t happen till later because even thought this line holds power it is useless if you don’t know what it's saying so in my final draft is where you get the back around info for that
last line to be impactful
Here:
(for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary, )
For you say his hair shines
and his muscles are full of might,
that he slayed the dragon
but he's never seen it scales
then tell me his heart it gold
when it quickly turn to shill.
but your praise of this knight fall upon
deaf ear who don’t care for slander nor lies,
In my first draft, it was 7 line long with a meaning I did not yet know. A week later it had it. Meaning, but the buildup was severely lacking and that didn't change till critic with my peers see wall at they time I had slowly been adding to the middle of the ode so the message could get across to my listener better but it seemed weak to me and didn’t quiet match but after I talk it out with them I realized wall I didn’t like the phrasing they have my listener agree it was a start to make the massage come across it just need a little refinement and that exactly what it got it when from this (for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
For oh do i sleep when you praise his might for the fifth time in one night) to this
(for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
For you say his hair shines
and his muscles are full of might,
that he slayed the dragon
but he's never seen it scales
then tell me his heart it gold
when it quickly turn to shill.
but your praise of this knight fall upon
deaf ear who don’t care for slander or lies,) in a day and completely transform how my poems impact land.
Three of the biggest changes I made throughout this project were going from nothing in the middle to this( for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
For oh do i sleep when you praise his might for the fifth time in one night) then editing and change this to this ((for odes made of glory are oh so ordinary,
For you say his hair shines
and his muscles are full of might,
that he slayed the dragon
but he's never seen it scales
then tell me his heart it gold
when it quickly turns to shale.
but your praise of this knight fall upon
deaf ear who don’t care for slander or lies,)
Then honestly the most important changes I made with the small this like changing the line ( and cider that burned like fire on a wintry night) to (and cinnamon cider that burns like fire)
And change it so that not every line started with the same word but still conveyed the same meaning
As I talk about in my last paragraph it was both the little changes and the small one I made through this project that made my poem the impactful piece it is now not only adding what I did to the middle but also adding the right line brakes and proper inflection it convey a surest emotion in that part allowing my reader/listen to fully connect with my work improving it over all experience.
Illyria Brunner 2022 Poetry Performance
10th Grade MUN-Afghanistan Humanitarian Crisis Project
Project Description
This MUN project was based on the issue of the Afghanistan humanitarian crisis. It was an 8 week project that involved many pages of research policy paper drafts resolution write up and practice MUN conference with silly topics. The MUN conference was a experience of which like I have never had before and wall we are all high school student that do our far share of messing around this project for sure brought out the professional side of us. For a short time we were our countries giving a voice to our people and making dissension that could determent the out come and future of an entire nation.
Policy Paper |
Project Reflection
|
10th Grade Adolescence Mask Project
The 10th grade adolescence mask project was apart of our adolescence unit in which each 10th grade student design a mask that represents some aspect of their adolescences expenses as well writing essay about there mask and adolescence to be shown at exhibition.
The Balancing Act of Adolescents In My opinion
When I was 10 we moved to Colorado from Texas and before that I was living in a different country and I live somewhere prior to that so moving as you can tell now is nothing new for me in fact I see it as my normal and staying in the same town for or city for then 3 to 5 five year is wired to me but that doesn’t stop me from getting that nervous feeling you know the one where you feel your throat started to tinned and your stomach in knots and yet still somehow a sucking sinking void or pit that is so powerful I might cry or bursted into laughter but don’t de ether because it also feel like my tongs being pulled pack down my throat out of nervous but no matter how many time I move I alway get that feeling and when I moved to Colorado it was no different I got the same feel and it only started to go away after the first time I cooked a common meal because that was the first time I got a sense of belongs in this new place Before covid-19 pandemic hit us we use to do this thing called common meal and that's where 2 or 3 people get together every wednesday and thursday and cook for everyone that sighs up to come to comae meal that week and being one of the younger people that sighed up to help cook often meant that I got stuck with the task of setting the table and filling the water content and never really getting to cook the meals so imagine my excitement when I got the chance to actually cook and not just cut a few carrot but be the sue chef. It was thursday, and I was sprawled out in our living room spelling and reading exercise worksheet but I was having trouble focusing I was so excited that at the idea of me cooking that night I had this airy feeling in my stomach the one I get when I am on a swing and I am high in the air and in that split second when your about to come back down you feel weight less that one which wasn’t helping me get my work done I kept checking the time waiting for the clock to say 5:00pm so I could go cook my first meal but right as I was about to gout the door my mom stopped me and ask about wether or not my homework was acutely done and know there was no way for you to win the argument that was surely follow suit if i lied and said yes I sat my butt down at my kitchen table glaring at my mom mad at her for making me finish my homework before I could go help cook but not really I was madder with myself and not my mom but myself because if I have probably blanched my shool life and personal life wound be in this situation
Balance is kinda like a scale that you're constantly trying not to tip, making sure that one part of your life doesn’t overpower the other and throw the scale off and this is always going on whether it be in this very moment, or a week from now , or even next year you are always balancing something and later, the balance will changes and adapt so not to tip the scale to the new challenge life will throw at you and adolescence is this balancing act
Now without a doubt last year being my freshman year of high school meant that I would be faced with a whole new kind of challenges and my balancing act was going to need to change and adapted for me to succeed in a high school environment but I ended up face a different kind of high school challenge because it was my freshman year in a global pandemic. How was i supposed to take my 8th grade balancing act of a pretty little gold scale of challenges to balance the mountain like challenge global pandemic high school was go to throw at me ? It just wouldn’t be able to handle what was coming my way and the so called right balance didn't excised anymore for me I had no idea were I needed my energy to be and i didn’t know who I could ask for help and I absolutely didn’t know what i was doing because I felt like i barely had a trusting relationship with my teacher and peer and i started adoption the I can figure it out myself mentality and I didn’t know it then but this was going to follow me into my sophomore year and the consequences were going to be nasty.
A few weeks back in my adolescence project we started our adolescent interview and i found myself stress and overwhelmed with school and my life outside of it and i knew I need to fine a way to balance both my school life and my personal life but I wasn’t quite sure what that might look like and despite my past experience i hadn’t made that much progress on my balancing act because freshman year the balancing act i had in middle school was now a pile of scrap metal my new environment had broken that scale rather quick then the new act i started grow last year were to small to handle y new work load
That had seem to go from 1 to a hundred fast then i could blink much less adapt and even thought the interview wasn’t a big workload and definitely not the only reason for my stress it still felt like a typing point but it turned out to be exactly what i needed because the interview gave me the chances to empathises with the women i was interviewing about the struggles that crossed her path in hight school and adolescent years and even though we were in different positions and under when different struggles that fundamental roots of adolescent confusion was the same and it help me feel less alone and more understanding of were this energy i was spending on stree should go and acule be to balance my scale.
I would bet that my balancing act is vastly different then pre covid high schools because their high school balancing acts where made before pandemic high school was a thing and because of this my balancing act is a crazy looking mess to outsider but doesn’t mean it feels that way to me and if the past two years have taut me anything it that it’s ok to not to know what your doing especially in your adolescent because what is adolescent if not a time for mistakes faller and finding your balancing act and to understanding that everyone's balancing act doesn’t looks the same or experiences adolescence the same. if you have a adolescent in your life and you see them struggling to fine a balance or better yet even before they start struggling stop and talk and don’t make it about you have a conversion about what they know works for them when they feel them self start to struggle what do they do to stop it or what make it go down hill do they already have a balancing act and how can you help keep the balance not tip the scale and if they don’t that fine help them make one and make sure it their own not yours because everyone balance looks different and require different amount of energy your won’t work for them.
When I was 10 we moved to Colorado from Texas and before that I was living in a different country and I live somewhere prior to that so moving as you can tell now is nothing new for me in fact I see it as my normal and staying in the same town for or city for then 3 to 5 five year is wired to me but that doesn’t stop me from getting that nervous feeling you know the one where you feel your throat started to tinned and your stomach in knots and yet still somehow a sucking sinking void or pit that is so powerful I might cry or bursted into laughter but don’t de ether because it also feel like my tongs being pulled pack down my throat out of nervous but no matter how many time I move I alway get that feeling and when I moved to Colorado it was no different I got the same feel and it only started to go away after the first time I cooked a common meal because that was the first time I got a sense of belongs in this new place Before covid-19 pandemic hit us we use to do this thing called common meal and that's where 2 or 3 people get together every wednesday and thursday and cook for everyone that sighs up to come to comae meal that week and being one of the younger people that sighed up to help cook often meant that I got stuck with the task of setting the table and filling the water content and never really getting to cook the meals so imagine my excitement when I got the chance to actually cook and not just cut a few carrot but be the sue chef. It was thursday, and I was sprawled out in our living room spelling and reading exercise worksheet but I was having trouble focusing I was so excited that at the idea of me cooking that night I had this airy feeling in my stomach the one I get when I am on a swing and I am high in the air and in that split second when your about to come back down you feel weight less that one which wasn’t helping me get my work done I kept checking the time waiting for the clock to say 5:00pm so I could go cook my first meal but right as I was about to gout the door my mom stopped me and ask about wether or not my homework was acutely done and know there was no way for you to win the argument that was surely follow suit if i lied and said yes I sat my butt down at my kitchen table glaring at my mom mad at her for making me finish my homework before I could go help cook but not really I was madder with myself and not my mom but myself because if I have probably blanched my shool life and personal life wound be in this situation
Balance is kinda like a scale that you're constantly trying not to tip, making sure that one part of your life doesn’t overpower the other and throw the scale off and this is always going on whether it be in this very moment, or a week from now , or even next year you are always balancing something and later, the balance will changes and adapt so not to tip the scale to the new challenge life will throw at you and adolescence is this balancing act
Now without a doubt last year being my freshman year of high school meant that I would be faced with a whole new kind of challenges and my balancing act was going to need to change and adapted for me to succeed in a high school environment but I ended up face a different kind of high school challenge because it was my freshman year in a global pandemic. How was i supposed to take my 8th grade balancing act of a pretty little gold scale of challenges to balance the mountain like challenge global pandemic high school was go to throw at me ? It just wouldn’t be able to handle what was coming my way and the so called right balance didn't excised anymore for me I had no idea were I needed my energy to be and i didn’t know who I could ask for help and I absolutely didn’t know what i was doing because I felt like i barely had a trusting relationship with my teacher and peer and i started adoption the I can figure it out myself mentality and I didn’t know it then but this was going to follow me into my sophomore year and the consequences were going to be nasty.
A few weeks back in my adolescence project we started our adolescent interview and i found myself stress and overwhelmed with school and my life outside of it and i knew I need to fine a way to balance both my school life and my personal life but I wasn’t quite sure what that might look like and despite my past experience i hadn’t made that much progress on my balancing act because freshman year the balancing act i had in middle school was now a pile of scrap metal my new environment had broken that scale rather quick then the new act i started grow last year were to small to handle y new work load
That had seem to go from 1 to a hundred fast then i could blink much less adapt and even thought the interview wasn’t a big workload and definitely not the only reason for my stress it still felt like a typing point but it turned out to be exactly what i needed because the interview gave me the chances to empathises with the women i was interviewing about the struggles that crossed her path in hight school and adolescent years and even though we were in different positions and under when different struggles that fundamental roots of adolescent confusion was the same and it help me feel less alone and more understanding of were this energy i was spending on stree should go and acule be to balance my scale.
I would bet that my balancing act is vastly different then pre covid high schools because their high school balancing acts where made before pandemic high school was a thing and because of this my balancing act is a crazy looking mess to outsider but doesn’t mean it feels that way to me and if the past two years have taut me anything it that it’s ok to not to know what your doing especially in your adolescent because what is adolescent if not a time for mistakes faller and finding your balancing act and to understanding that everyone's balancing act doesn’t looks the same or experiences adolescence the same. if you have a adolescent in your life and you see them struggling to fine a balance or better yet even before they start struggling stop and talk and don’t make it about you have a conversion about what they know works for them when they feel them self start to struggle what do they do to stop it or what make it go down hill do they already have a balancing act and how can you help keep the balance not tip the scale and if they don’t that fine help them make one and make sure it their own not yours because everyone balance looks different and require different amount of energy your won’t work for them.
Project Reflection Questions
- Explain how you grew as a writer in this project. Be specific, go back through your essay to find evidence. If possible, compare specific examples from an earlier draft with your final draft, and discuss how your essay changed, and why those changes made it a stronger piece of writing.
2. What are your largest take-aways from this project and how have they transformed the way you see the world or yourself? This could be from any part of the project: the content, the essay and mask, the design thinking process, exhibition prep, or the exhibition itself.
I always knew that people see the world differently but this project show how even thought we all see the world in our own ways and we can have the same experience we all see them in different ways and I saw this the most during exhibition night when parents were reading our adolescent mask essays piece I had so many different parent ask how is our generation going to make it are we ok and so many more thing like this but I had read these essays and talk to their owner just like them and these were not the question that came to mind for me my thought were wow this writing to so descriptive or hay they made a really good point their. E this experience helped me better understand that just because you see it as one way some else might see the polar opposite of it and that ok to.
3. How do you feel you have grown as a project worker and student throughout the course of this semester? Be specific and provide evidence!
Throughout the school year we have done a variety of project some hands on and others more focused on intellectual experience and if given the option I was be seen leaning to intellectual work but throughout the year I have seen myself become more comfortable pick hands on work even in small things like physics demonstrations I didn’t find myself shining way from them and especially in my exhibition group there was a lot of hands on work for example I did something completely outside of my comfort zone by make mask stand and that is something I don’t thing I would have had the confidence to do last year and now looking bake on all the project i have done this year I can’t help but feel proud of myself and excited for what the future might bring for me as well.
4. Describe what you did as a group member and how it contributed to the success of our exhibition. Include what you would change or do differently if you were to do this project again.
During the Adolescent mask project we were slip into different groups so that the work load that comes with preparing and setting up for exhibition wouldn’t fall on one person, each group were given different task to complete for exhibition night the group I got sorted into were responsible for mask set up and is started of great we were all working together brainstorming set up ideas creating material lists but that was were the group work died my job as a planer turned into me being the enter mask group for my pod I mad final floor plan with the other groups collected all the lighting made mask stand and help the other pod finish set up so when it come to the mask exhibition the real question is what didn’t I do to contribute to the success of exhibition.