This semester, I’ve grown tremendously as both a poet and a literary critic. Through workshops, video lectures, annotation assignments, and critical essays, I’ve sharpened my close reading skills, deepened my understanding of Modernist poetry and its philosophies, and learned how to connect past and present through poetic form and content.

In this space, I will reflect on my development using specific artifacts from class—like my annotations on Perusall, my Modernist Critical Essay, and my own poetry drafts and revisions—to show how I’ve met the course’s learning outcomes. This journey helped me become a more intentional writer, a more confident analyzer, and a more thoughtful peer.

At the end of this Padlet, you’ll also find my final poetry portfolio—a collection of my best Modernist-inspired work. I hope you enjoy exploring my process!

📚 Artifact 1: In my Perusall annotations on H.D.'s “Sea Rose,” I explored how the poem’s broken rhythm and compact stanzas mirror the fragility and resilience of the rose. I commented:

“The line ‘stunted, with small leaf’ lacks flourish—just like the rose herself. It’s like the form is speaking her truth before the words even do.”

📝 Artifact 2: In my Modernist Critical Essay, I analyzed how E.E. Cummings used parentheses and spacing in “i” to reflect the speaker’s inner conflict. I wrote:

“The lowercase ‘i’ and the frequent isolation of words visually reflect a fractured self, embodying Modernist themes of fragmentation and alienation.”

These examples show how I moved beyond surface reading and started asking how form, punctuation, and rhythm contribute to a poem’s deeper meaning.

In my Modernist Critical Essay, I analyzed how Cummings’ “i” and my own poem “Self-Lens” both explore selfhood as a fluid, shifting identity. I wrote:

“By positioning ‘i’ at the edge of the line, Cummings visually displaces the self. My poem mirrors this instability by using slashes instead of line breaks to suggest the pressure of modern identity collapse.”

Through analyzing the formal choices of a Modernist poet and applying those ideas to my own writing, I synthesized Cummings' ideas with my own poetic goals. I also considered class lectures on identity, which helped me frame my interpretations more critically.

In our reading of Ezra Pound’s "A Retrospect," his mantra “Make it new!” stood out to me. It directly influenced how I approached my Imagist-inspired poem where I focused on economy of language and direct imagery. I revised the poem to remove unnecessary adjectives and focused on showing.

I also connected Gertrude Stein’s ideas on repetition-as-difference to my Harlem Renaissance-inspired piece. In my Craft Padlet, I wrote:

“Stein’s use of looping repetition taught me that saying something again doesn’t mean redundancy it can actually reshape the meaning.”

In my Harlem Renaissance poem “Reclaim,” I referenced police violence and generational trauma. I drew inspiration from Langston Hughes’ protest poetry, particularly “Let America Be America Again.” In a class comment, I noted:

“Hughes’ bitterness and hope coexist in the same lines—I tried to channel that tension in my poem, where the speaker flips the American Dream into a question.”

In one Perusall post, I compared the fragmentation in Imagist poems to the disconnection people feel today due to social media and constant information overload. The Lost Generation’s feelings of loss after WWI reflect our post-pandemic cultural confusion.

Art echoes across time. This course helped me make those echoes ring louder in my own writing.

My Strengths:

• I took risks in language play, like breaking grammar rules in “i-self (unfinished)” to reflect instability.

• I learned to research poetic movements deeply—like looking into Cubism for my analysis of Stein and crafting a poem that mimicked that logic.

My Struggles:

• I still find revising poetry hard. Cutting lines I love is emotionally tough, and I struggle with trusting that “less is more.”

• Giving feedback in workshops challenged me—especially balancing encouragement with honest critique. But reading others’ work gave me new perspectives.

Overall, I’m walking away with better habits: freewriting, annotating my own work, and embracing revision as creative—not just corrective.