“Grossmont Middle College High School” Poem - 9/22/21 - English 7h - Bice

Assignment: Write a poem (based on the mentor text: “Kabul”) of your own that exalts a place

that is beautiful and emotional for you. It can be anywhere; your aim is to show us the beauty of

a place that may be overlooked or even stereotyped by others.

Generally, I am not familiar with writing poetry, and this assignment was a good creative step for

my writing, which, in the last few months, has become confined to dry college essays. College

essays are a very niche form of writing, requiring one to sell oneself. This poem, while

somewhat messy and cheesy, was an enjoyable contrast to these essays and was a fun

creative process in itself. Overall, I would give myself a personal performance grade of 4 out of

4. As previously stated, I’m not a “poetry person” and have recently been too busy to read

(which massively influences writing) and historically have not written anything like this. I wanted

to create vivid imagery and stir up emotions: not in a subtle way like most of my essays, and I

think I accomplished that. Product wise, I would give myself a ¾. While it has some good

images and ideas, the poem is somewhat flat in its structure and even meaning. A good part of

the product, however, is that I followed the structure of the mentor text “Kabul” to a close and

accurate degree in terms of tone and topic. Despite some shortcomings, I learned how to write

with more emotion and creativity, something that I can use in other areas of my writing.