The Sound Of Fruit
Draft 1Rip the ripe apple off this tree
Pop as I pierce its skin Making a gold ring among Its red surface trimmed Like a rug Immaculate surface only Touched by a glove Oh how I love the Lavishing flavor. Draft 2RIP. PICK. SNATCH. POP.
RIP the ripe red apple Off this regal tree And catch the ones that Tumble down. RIP. PICK. SNATCH POP. PICK the perfectly plump Strawberries off their bush And pierce the porous Red flesh. RIP. PICK. SNATCH. POP. SNATCH the banana from The monkeys overbearing Hand and slowly peel the Yellow skin. RIP. PICK. SNATCH. POP. POP the purple grapes Past the pondering pupils Of your English class And take a bite. RIP. PICK. SNATCH. POP. Draft 3RIP. PICK. SNATCH. POP.
RIP the ripe red apple Off this regal tree And catch the ones that Tumble down PICK the perfectly plump Strawberries off their bush And pierce the porous Red flesh SNATCH the banana from The monkeys overbearing Hand and slowly peel the Yellow skin. POP the purple grapes Past the pondering pupils Of your English class Wond’ring when they can have a bite. RIP. PICK. SNATCH. POP. Draft 4Fruits lay rest in a basket
Static to the painter at work But when he leaves his muse alone The children barge in with separate plans. Three tiny hands reach in and Snatch the first Fine fruit their Fresh eyes see First up, is the tangerine Rip the tangy skin and Toss it to the side To split the peels in three Then they pile up as many Plump strawberries that Can fit their grip before They burst and bleed. And before they can round The red royal apples and the Purple plump grapes To take A painter has found their Rubble and is Ready to Burst. |
ERN This poem is the product of one of the in class writing exercises we did at the beginning of the semester. It is the same exercise mentioned in the ERN for Love For Shore, where the class adds words to the list without realizing what the other person wrote. My starting word was “rip” and my ending word was “mail”. In the first draft of this, I was so preoccupied trying to get all of the words in, that I didn’t understand what I was writing as a poem. For example, what is so immaculate about the skin of an apple? I’m pretty sure those get really dirty. But one thing that I did like about this first draft was the onomatopoeia. This inspired me to write the next drafts using onomatopoetic words and phrases. And since an apple was included in the first draft of this poem, I thought, why not name this poem The Sound of Fruit. My objectives for the drafts to follow this first one were to use onomatopoeia, and to appeal to ALL of the readers senses using something simple, well known, and yummy…like fruit.
For the second draft, I wanted to experiment with repetition again, especially with the words that will stand out the most in this poem “Rip, pick, snatch, pop”. I put it in the beginning of every stanza, and I thought it added a playful sound to the poem. With this poem, I was really aiming for it to be all about the sound of the poem. This is why I alliterated like crazy and used words that can be said the same way that they sound. I envisioned this poem’s perfect place in a child’s poetry collection, or in a nursery rhyme. However, something that may be overlooked, since the sound sense and rhythm are so strong, the images were overlooked. For the third draft, I took out the repetition except for at the beginning of the poem and at the end of the poem. Omitting the repeated phrase from between every stanza slowed the poem down significantly. It made the descriptions more sensual. I was questioning whether I liked this version better than the draft before, but I couldn’t tell. They both had their strengths. The slow pace of this draft really hones in on the images as well as the sound, as opposed to the draft above, where the sound tends to overshadow the images. In the last draft, I changed the entire premise of the poems I had written before and turned it into a narrative. When brainstorming with the name The Sound of Fruit, the first thing that came to my mind is that famous fruit bowl painting by William Henry Hunt. Keeping with the theme of sound and having the thought of children reading this poem, I thought a whimsical narrative about children messing with the muse would be fun to write. I basically kept the alliteration that I had throughout the other drafts such as “red royal apples” and “purple plump grapes”, but I added a narrative to it. By adding this narrative, I noticed that the images and the sounds that the poem possessed was balanced and one did not overshadow the other. |