Final Poem Assessment

The perspective of my poem, The Bathtub, became more sophisticated with every
draft that I wrote. It went from a poem with an incomplete message to a coherent
statement of the aftermath of war. Initially, it was packed with random lines added
to sound deep and make it purposefully confusing as I tried to copy what I thought
was modern poetry. To be honest, I personally didnt even know what half of the
first draft was supposed to mean. The poem then slowly blossomed into a poem
with a variety of poetic devices that were correctly used and a powerful message.
Still a little out of the readers immediate reach, but it was purposeful. By taking out
repetitious words, phrases and ideas, and eliminating boring words and
meaningless phrases, I made my poem interesting and flow rather well. The poem I
wrote went from something I was ashamed of and a bad Sylvia Plath knock off to a
poem I called my own that was inspired by Sylvia Plath. It became something that I
was extraordinarily proud of .
One of the key changes that I made to my poem was shifting my focus to the
emotional and sensory aspects of the poem and away from straightforward
intellectual clarity. Throughout the peer critique process I was repeatedly told to
make my message painstakingly obvious, which I did not conform to. In one of my
earliest drafts I wrote I am the schizoid man I was not always the schizoid man
they made me this way (The Bathtub 7-9). This is referring to the characters
PTSD, which I was trying to get across to the reader as clearly as possible while
keeping my poetic style. These few lines of the poem needed to change because I
was trying too hard to make the message intellectually clear to the reader. It did not
come from the depths of my imagination like the rest of my poem did. Those few
lines came from a place of begging the acceptance of my peers to love my poem. In
the final draft, I had completely taken out those lines and replaced them with I am a
man who cant face the past, present, or future caused by actions and orders
screamed by tough puppets my actions forced upon me by them (The Bathtub 7-
9). I feel these changes made the poem more emotional by using poetic devices such
as symbolism. It also makes the meaning of the poem more challenging to
understand, which is exactly what I was aiming for. My poem greatly improved
from this change because the old obvious lines about being schizoid which is
simply a label turned into the more emotionally wrenching reality of the character
being disassociated from his past, present, or future.
Another change that I made was introducing reoccurring symbolism, metaphor,
allusion, and imagery throughout my poem to make it more emotional and improve
how it flowed. For example, in the first drafts the character is introduced in the
bathtub and that is the only reference to a tub. In later drafts, I expanded this and
used reoccurring imagery of the bathtub throughout the poem. After all, the bathtub
is a metaphor for how the character sees his world and how he places himself in it.
In my second draft I wrote Red sailors scatter out of my ears to safety away from
this shriek (The Bathtub 20) which became Red sailors scatter out of my ears,
wrists, and eyes sailors that were the old me dripping to safety they go down to the
tomato undersized ocean (The Bathtub 20-23). Another example of a reoccurring
reference to a bathtub full of blood is the line, In this small red iron sea (The
Bathtub 34). These changes helped improve my poem by giving the reader a better
image of what was occurring and a greater sense of the horror of the mans life
fading in the blood stained bathtub. This made my poem more emotional and raw,
since it depicts the horror the man in the bathtub was going through. I made these
changes because I wanted to place a visual image in the mind of the reader that at
first might not register but over time the reader would grasp and keep coming back
to.
The last major change that I made to my poem was to intensify the message that war
has horrible consequences, which soldiers cannot out live. In my first draft, the
character did not die but just suffered intense hallucinations reliving the horrors of
battle. One of my peers suggested that a more impactful ending would be the suicide
of the man in the bathtub. Originally I wrote, The truth I now see is a schizoid me
who cant handle the truth nor reality my mind is schizoid from my past memories
(The Bathtub 30-32). This needed to be changed to incorporate a more powerful
message and one that would be shocking to the reader and would stick in the
readers mind. War is shocking so why shouldnt the message of the poem be
shocking as well? In my final draft I wrote, The shutters are closed for an eternity
from lack of my immortality (The Bathtub 38-40). This change impacted both the
intellectual and emotional aspect of my poem by making people feel the pain that
war brings through individual suffering. The shocking thought that war is deadly to
the combatants both during and after battle became a much stronger message. This
change improved my poem tremendously and I have never been so proud of any
schoolwork that I have ever done. I hope that all of these changes improved my
poem to the point that it now delivers a powerful message that intellectually and
emotionally sticks with the reader.