Epilogue

This epilogue is here to address what I learned, what I liked, and what I would change should I do a project like this again. Well, I really liked the fact that I could create whatever I wanted to. I could take the words that someone else had already set down, but interpret them in whatever way struck me (kinda like lightning) and create something completely new. I won’t lie, I was very apprehensive about the whole project centering around poetry. I have always been nervous about sharing my poetry (when I write any) in any sort of public way. That being said, I think that this was a good chance to learn. I learned about finding comfort in saying what I wanted to say and finding comfort in sharing those words. I learned that becoming comfortable with my poetry is a time-consuming process and that I needed to utilize re-writes to reach that level of comfort! I also learned that inspiration can come from anything, even another work of art. An artist or writer doesn’t need to be confined to the theme that is obvious in another work, but they should just embrace what hits them right away and run with it, then go back and revise.

I could really do a cop-out move here and say that what I liked is everything that I learned, though I guess I should probably come up with a separate subject. In that case, I guess I really liked the ability to interact with the materials that others brought to the table. I probably chose two poets that fellow “lightning rods” Caroline and Daniel would not have thought about choosing. So, I liked how we could make personal choices that then cause something else to happen with the other team members. I also liked how we chose blogging as our medium. I think that doing a blog project lends a tone of informality to the project and the writers are free to be light and conversational in whatever they post and whoever reads the blog can sort of get a sense of whom they are reading.

Finally, if I could do this project over, I would change the timing. Getting organized was slightly more complicated than anticipated which caused the project to come together right in the nick of time. I also would re-think posting the new response poems (what I dubbed the “original responses” in my own paperwork) as comments. Instead, I would maybe post the original work, the analysis, and the response poem in the same post rather than have them separate. If this were an extended project, I would think about making separate sections for the authors that served as inspirations as well. Overall, I think this project worked and I’m happy with what developed, and I hope that maybe this will cause someone else to be struck by inspiration too!