You are on page 1of 2

PAMDISS for The Psychology of Aging

The purpose of this piece was to explain how my emotions, at certain parts of
my life, could be justified by different psychological phenomena. With these prose
poems, I wanted the readers to understand that while I was growing up I felt
isolated from the people around me. I wanted readers to think about their own
emotional maturation and what psychological theories or practices effect them.
Throughout the piece, I name different psychological phenomena without
giving the definition. I consciously chose to leave the definitions out of the text in
order to attempt to explain them through the events they relate to. I assume that my
audience either has prior knowledge about the terms I use, or I assume that they
have the wherewithal to find the information they need in order to proceed.
The primary mode of this piece is narration. I use the poems to narrate
different ages of my life in and the events that were the most important during those
ages. The secondary mode of this piece is description. I use descriptions of
emotional and physical encounters in order to narrate the events of my life.
One word I used in this piece was realization when referring to mortality. I
chose this word because thats exactly what happens when a child finally
understands that eventually everyone dies; it is a realization. Originally I had chosen
to say the awareness of mortality, which slightly alters the meaning of the phrase.
Another word I chose to use was dissonance. I use this word to explain the
constant contradicting thoughts that run through my head, but I chose it for a
reason completely independent of the text. My best friend wrote a poem about me
once, and he spoke about how his feelings for me are purposefully unmatched by his
actions towards me. He used the word dissonance several times and I thought it
captured the idea of contradictory incredibly well, so before I even decided how the
poem would be written, I knew I wanted to use the word dissonance. It is for this
reason that I did not contemplate using another word.
A sentence in this piece that demonstrates effective use of imagery is: You
are taught to think that you are a single gear, tailored to fir the part of any machine
you can imagine; but thats just it: you cannot imagine a single one. This sentence
demonstrates mastery of textual imagery by using a metaphor of gears in a machine
to relate to how we, as humans, fit into society. This image dances around concrete
details about how society works in order to help the reader understand that it is all
sort of arbitrary.
In the Age Fourteen poem, I manipulate several sentences to internally and
externally rhyme. All eyes glance toward the chair you have so nosily shifted, no
word about your emotions, not even a comforting finger is lifted. They all eat in
silence, then sip on coffee to music and say goodnight while the moon is still high.
You give kisses and hugs to everyone; your favorite part of the night was goodbye. I

PAMDISS for The Psychology of Aging


manipulate these rhymes in order to remind the reader that this piece is not a
vignette of prose, but a collection of prose poems.
I organized my piece this way because it felt like the only suitable way to tell
the story I needed to tell. I started with the youngest age I could remember, working
my way up to the present. I ended the essay with my most recent age to show
readers that despite maturation and emotional growth, youre always going to have
pain and things to overcome. With the structure of my piece, I wish to openly convey
the message that growing up is no easy task for the psyche.

You might also like