Activity II

After reading the assignment proposal, I immediately knew I wanted to find a poem, and construct a shape, that represented the attacks on September 11. This day has a large impact on everyone's lives and carries a lot of meaning, so I felt this topic was very appropriate. I knew I wanted to shape the poem to look like the twin towers, though a shape so easy can still be very difficult.



These words carry a grief and sad emotion, and represent the attacks on September 11, though the reader has to read the entire poem to realize this. I wanted to give the readers an image that does not reveal the poem too much, yet gets them interested. The shape is simple, and in its own has the potential to resemble many different poems. The poem itself, with the numerous short word phrases, was very good for constructing the shape of the twin towers. To make all the phrases seem the same length, I often had to increase the line spacing between words. In addition to lengthening the spaces, I chose to color the corresponding lines, interchangeably, red and blue. I did this to represent the United States and the patriotic, sad, feeling to the poem. I feel strongly about the attacks on September 11 and pray for those who lost their loved ones every year on this date. The shape of the words and the words of the poem become one when a reader dives into this poem, and the colors give the reader a patriotic feeling.

My favorite lines, though are not found together in the poem, are "The rain is ashes," and "The rain falls down." These two lines place a very clear picture in my head of the twin towers, that everyone seen that day on the news. I immediately pictured the large pieces of debris falling from the towers onto the ground. I feel these two line were placed in the poem to make the reader visualize this, which for me, causes the emotions to pour out of the words. The words found in this poem also symbolize the people's feelings, the darkness of the day, and how slow this sorrow moment took to pass. The poem does a good job at repeating words as well, to get them stuck in the readers head and cause them to think. I find repetitiveness the most effective way in reaching someone's emotions, in this case, the poem does just that.

I understand the picture is not very clear, I ran into this problem when I didnt know how to transfer my shape to a JPEG, so I was forced to take a screen shot.