Analysis of 2nd Task Poems

In my 2nd task of rewriting the paragraphs into poems with a more focused and shaped center, I basically read each paragraph and tried to find the points that stuck out the most to me as the point and the meaning. What I found in the first paragraph was that Peggy "Clevenger" was largely seen as an outsider in a very close-knit community of people, which I believe was why she was regarded as a witch, and, ironically, warded off with "The Pineys'" own superstitious methods. I tried to convey that sense of her being an outsider in the poem with a few different techniques. Mainly I emphasized the fact that she was different- starting off with the claim that she could transform into a rabbit and then talking about how she came from different areas than the rest of The Pineys, that she had a last name which was Hessian, and therefore was not really considered one of them. I also used some repetition in my poem to get this point across, repeatedly using the line "Replaced with the form of Peggy Cleaver." Changing the last name of Peggy was another technique I used. I had originally accidentally written Cleaver rather than Clevenger, but upon further consideration and discussion with the senior poet, decided to switch her last name to Cleaver because it indicated even further a sense of disconnect- "a cleaver" is something that chops things, separates things, cuts them apart, and that was my main goal in the poem, to show that Peggy was apart, that she very much other. In the format of the poem I tried to show this by always making the name "Peggy Cleaver" stand alone, on its own line, just like the character did.

In the second paragraph about the blueberry picking, the thing that struck me most was that Charlie's whole life was entirely consumed by farm labor; his whole family worked on that farm and that to me seemed to be everything they had. I sensed a kind of frustration within Charlie, and a tiredness. As someone who has picked blueberries before, I know the kind of exhausting and thankless labor it can be- and that's doing it for only an hour or so. As for Charlie, I sensed that he felt trapped in this cycle of generational labor, an unfair sort of labor that never gave back all that he gave into it, especially as he talked about the unjust treatment of the laborers by corporate supermarkets. At the same time, it is very hard and honest work; the fact than an elderly man would simply approach Charlie and give him a large sum of money's worth of tickets, rather than keep them for himself, is indicative of a very strong sense of honor among the laborers. Basically in the poem, I tried to depict Charlie's exhaustion, his feeling spent and tired and under-appreciated but then at the end being surprised by the unexpected justice that can come to one in this world. This is where I took some liberalities in the poem- I added extra descriptions of Charlie the way I pictured him in my head- as rather hardened and weathered from years of this thankless labor. In the format I attempted to emphasize the labor aspect of everything, how it was their entire life, how every member of his family had a part in it. How it made people almost inhuman- like cattle they herded around a pump just for some water. I think that the poem was written with longer lines punctuated in between with shorter, brisk sentences to underscore certain themes: such as the labor and the thrown togetherness of all the ages of people, and Charlie's final shock and surprise, the large sum of money.