mhsi08

Process Paper

By Mike Horn

HVWP Summer Institute 2008

     From the beginning of the institute I was hoping to write a little poetry. The problem was, the more poetry I read, the less capable of writing I felt. As we approached the last week, I decided that it was time to try; I just didn’t know when. Last Saturday morning my daughter wanted me to go with her for some college placement tests and be around if she was going to make her first semester schedule. After we arrived, I was told that she would need at least a couple of hours to take the tests, so I decided to go for a drive. Soon after leaving the campus, I saw the sign for Olana, the home of the artist Frederick Church.

     I decided to turn in and check the place out, taking my journal with me to attempt some poetry. I walked around awhile searching for inspiration, but nothing was happening. I decided to find a bench in the shade, sit down, and just relax. After a few minutes, I decided to just focus on what I was seeing, hearing, and smelling. Then I was thinking about how important it is to just take some time to enjoy nature and relax. It was now time to write. The idea of taking some time seemed to work well with explaining what my senses were taking in. After 15 or 20 minutes my first poem was written. There was one problem though; my poem sounded horrible when I read it. Frustrated, I decided it was time to leave the journal alone.

     The next morning I took out the journal to take a look at the poem to see if it could be saved. I was pleasantly surprised to see a piece of work that I liked. After a few corrections, I thought that there might be something there after all. Our writing group tried to meet on Monday, but we were unable to use our memory sticks to bring any of our work up. We didn’t really have any time after that to share our work, so I chose to share it with my wife yesterday. She really seemed to like it, so I decide to submit it.

     This piece feels pretty good to me. I would still like some feedback on it from my group though. I’m not sure what I would change and I don’t really have any future plans for it, but at least now I know I’ve finally written a poem.

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