Poetry Project
Artist Statement
Alexandra Solenn Rodd
It is thought, in today’s society, that by owning something, you
have power over it. This could be possessions, money, or anything else you seem
to “control.” We as humans are always thought to be the ones who hold power over
everything else, but what most people never think of is, could this really be
the opposite? Could our possessions, and things we think we hold power over,
actually hold power over us?
This question has been presented to me multiple times through
various conversations, presentations, and ideas that people have shared over the
years, and has forced me to think deeply about this idea. This one question has
inspired me to want to learn and think more, but to bring out the ideas floating
around in my mind, I began writing down these thoughts that came to me, which
eventually, turned into the poem I call “Puissance,” which means ‘power’ in
French.
The main inspiration for writing this poem on power was a spoken
word video I saw by Jefferson Bethke, titled ‘counterfeit gods.’ He talks about
how we make the things we do and own, our gods, and how things we thought we
hold power over, can really control us. One of the ideas presented that really
captures my attention is how, if we can’t give something up, this could be a
thought, possession, status, or anything else we may look at as innocent, we
have officially lost control over it, and it now owns us, rather then we owning
it. I thought these ideas were harsh, but also very true, some things we just
‘have,’ we would never give a second thought to, but really when you step back
and realize you are losing them, you see the power they made you feel, and you
can never let them go. These things have become your gods, they begin to control
you before you even know it, until one day you feel you can’t live without
it.
This is what my poem is based off of, this idea that possessions
can actually begin to control us, how we can’t ‘live without’ certain things in
our lives we thought we held power over. I wanted to show people this
through poetry, it is not something you can just say, it’s
not as simple as that. Poetry opens up new ideas and windows, and creates a more
complex way of saying something. This was what I needed, to show how some things
we look at as innocent, or not capable of anything, can take hold of us and not
let go.
Alexandra Solenn Rodd
It is thought, in today’s society, that by owning something, you
have power over it. This could be possessions, money, or anything else you seem
to “control.” We as humans are always thought to be the ones who hold power over
everything else, but what most people never think of is, could this really be
the opposite? Could our possessions, and things we think we hold power over,
actually hold power over us?
This question has been presented to me multiple times through
various conversations, presentations, and ideas that people have shared over the
years, and has forced me to think deeply about this idea. This one question has
inspired me to want to learn and think more, but to bring out the ideas floating
around in my mind, I began writing down these thoughts that came to me, which
eventually, turned into the poem I call “Puissance,” which means ‘power’ in
French.
The main inspiration for writing this poem on power was a spoken
word video I saw by Jefferson Bethke, titled ‘counterfeit gods.’ He talks about
how we make the things we do and own, our gods, and how things we thought we
hold power over, can really control us. One of the ideas presented that really
captures my attention is how, if we can’t give something up, this could be a
thought, possession, status, or anything else we may look at as innocent, we
have officially lost control over it, and it now owns us, rather then we owning
it. I thought these ideas were harsh, but also very true, some things we just
‘have,’ we would never give a second thought to, but really when you step back
and realize you are losing them, you see the power they made you feel, and you
can never let them go. These things have become your gods, they begin to control
you before you even know it, until one day you feel you can’t live without
it.
This is what my poem is based off of, this idea that possessions
can actually begin to control us, how we can’t ‘live without’ certain things in
our lives we thought we held power over. I wanted to show people this
through poetry, it is not something you can just say, it’s
not as simple as that. Poetry opens up new ideas and windows, and creates a more
complex way of saying something. This was what I needed, to show how some things
we look at as innocent, or not capable of anything, can take hold of us and not
let go.
Puissance
Power
lacks weakness
We
are fragile
It
is not.
We
degrade
It
stays
strong
It
is the drug we can’t live without, always there, cannot be weeded
out.
It
is a blizzard, binding,
Imprisoning
us in icy chains.
You
may think you have power,
The
power to control your life, things around
you.
The
power to discover something new,
The
Power to have your own thoughts,
And
do the things you want to do
Relationships,
thoughts, looks, pressure to be
Cool,
We
hold power over these things right?
We
can choose to be ourselves, or to be society’s
tool.
But
what starts as control, can end with a
fight,
A
choice can move away at the speed of
light.
Like
the world’s greatest magician
It can easily deceive,
Makes
us think everything else is in
submission
When
really it plays tricks on our mind, never to
leave.
You fall in love with
something
It captures your
life,
It sits on a throne you
create
Reserved for someone else
Great.
But taken, it rules you, steals all the love in your
eyes.
We
as humans feel power,
We
feel it every day,
The
fact that we have the right
To say the words we wish to say.
How
we build ourselves up on the world’s popular
tower,
Own
the things we want to own,
And
see the things we wish to be shown
And then there are the
things
The
objects, possessions we hold everyday
It
could be a car, money that makes us into
kings
Makes
us unstoppable.
Objects
that give us power but
they
May
Choose
to leave.
You beg them not to
go
If they left your life would be
over
You have nowhere else to
turn
If they left your power would
disappear
They agree to
stay
If
they
can become your idol. . .
. . . They stay, and you worship them,
Create a throne they
overtake
As
you become a slave
Bow
down before them
Then
fall
into fresh graves.
They knock on your
door
You let them
in
Then before you know what is
happening
They have their hands
around
your neck
Strangling,
Taking all you
have
Your power, your control, they become your
everything leaving no choice of
escape.
They reach through prison
bars
Grasping, screaming to come
out.
And you let them.
You let out the killers
They gain your trust, you believe “they belong to me, they can’t hurt
me”
. . . As soon as your guard
drops, they move in.
Move in on the kill, kidnap your mind and make you
Their
Own.
It comes into your life in the form of
love. . .
At first it seems a beautiful
thing!
But soon it is your everything,
controlling.
You can’t give it
up,
You’re a slave to your
possessions
Put in
shackles,
Confined.
You
stand, a city in ruins, ancient,
your power now gone.
Robbed
by a thief in the night it crept in,
You
didn’t realize until the damage was
done
It
cut through your life
A river flowing, eroding away everything within. .
Degrading.
It’s
a fight to keep yourself
Grasping
for the power you once knew
If you can’t give it up, you don’t own it
It
Owns
You.
My Poetry Project
The format of my project was a stop motion video where I spelled out all the words of my poem and took a picture of each one to put into a video matched up with my voice speaking the poem. due to technical difficulties I was not able to upload my video to this website, however this is a sample picture of what my video looked like in some places.
Growth as a Poet Reflection
In the
earlier stages of the poetry project, I was very inspired by the idea of how we
can make the things we own or want our gods, and how they may become our idols
and ‘take over’ our lives. I kept to this idea while writing my poem, and
expanded on this idea of power and how objects can take over our minds. The
point I wanted to make very clear, and the one which expanded the most
throughout this project, was the idea that the things we can’t give up, are the
ones controlling us. For example, in the final draft I wrote, “If you can’t give
it up you don’t own it, it owns you.” I wanted to clearly show how it isn’t
random things in life that can take control over us, it is the things that we
could never imagine life without, the things like relationships, money, and
status in society that become our ‘gods’ they are the things which take control
of our life and define us. This idea became very prominent in the final drafts
of my poem and grew in sophistication as the project expanded, which added
greatly to the final effect of my poem, and gave the audience something more to
think about, a way to relate the words I wrote to their own lives.
An important change I decided to make in my poem was formatting, I
originally wrote Puissance evenly
spaced, and pauses in how you read and spoke the poem were only present as
commas and periods. I saw many other poems with breaks between words or lines,
and decided to play around with formatting and spacing. This helped me to create
pauses between lines and words so when being read, it had natural pauses and
intonations without having to use multiple commas and periods. For example,
before I made this it was hard to know how the poem was supposed to be spoken,
because of this; I was the only one who could read it to the effect that I
wanted it to be read from. An important change I made was spacing out the words
in the ending, it changed from “it, owns, you.” To
“It
Owns
You.”
This made the ending more dramatic and as a reader who did not know how I, as the
author, wanted this poem to be spoken, this change made the reading very
dramatic and gave the poem a stronger ending. Formatting my poem to a way of
reading that is not usually seen, made it stronger and will keep the audience
more engaged with figuring out how to speak the poem with the pauses and
intonations where I intended them to be.
Another important change I made to my poem was how I created the rhyme
scheme. I used to think that a poem was not a poem if it did not rhyme; I now
know that is not true as many places in my poem do not rhyme with each other. I
began writing my poem being sure that every word rhymed, however soon found how
hard that is to do, and eventually began to see the effects that cheesiness has
on a poem. After figuring this out, I began to worry less about the rhyme
scheme, and worry more about getting my point across to the audience through my
poem. In earlier versions of puissance I would write something such as,
“It sees
all, a lion roaming its turf
A blizzard
covering the earth
A tower
reaching into the cloud above
You can
never let go, like someone in love.”
Stanzas and lines like this were how my
poem was formed, it sounded choppy and cheesy like I had only written what I had
so that everything rhymed. Which was true, it was hard for me to get out of the
loop of rhyming everything, but once I did, it made my poem much stronger and
easier to read, natural but stronger. After I began to stop worrying about
rhyming all the words, I wrote many strong stanzas such as,
“You stand,
a city in ruins,
ancient,
your power now gone.
Robbed by a
thief in the night it crept in,
You didn’t
realize until the damage was done
It cut
through your life
A river flowing, eroding away everything within. .
Degrading. .
.” There is some subtle rhyming in here, but not every line does rhyme. Even
though it does not rhyme, this was one of the strongest stanzas in my poem. If I
had only focused on rhyming all that was said in this stanza, it would have most
likely come out sounding cheesy and unrefined, however, the subtle use of rhyme
between the words gone and done made this stanza flow well, at the same time as
letting me write what I needed to write to add to the message of power.
One of the last major changes made to my poem was taking out three
stanzas at the very end. I thought I needed these stanzas to wrap up what was
said in the poem, but when looking closer, I realized these three stanzas only
re-said everything I mentioned in my poem, and actually dragged it out and made
puissance almost too long. I decided
that I needed to begin cutting out stanzas to shorten my poem, and learn to say
things in a concise, but still poetic way. I ended up cutting out the last
three stanzas of my poem and ending it on the words, “it owns you.” Before
these stanzas were cut, the poem ended with the words, “do you hold power over
these things? Or do they hold power over you?” This ending definitely wrapped
up what I spoke about here, however, it didn’t seem to flow well with the rest
of the poem, or sound like anything other than someone talking and randomly
asking you these questions. I did not like this and wanted to create an ending
that ended almost abruptly, leaving the audience with something to think about
which was not in the form of two questions. Taking out these stanzas and ending
the poem here took out parts where I repeated myself, and helped to make this
poem more concise and to the point, but still powerful.
earlier stages of the poetry project, I was very inspired by the idea of how we
can make the things we own or want our gods, and how they may become our idols
and ‘take over’ our lives. I kept to this idea while writing my poem, and
expanded on this idea of power and how objects can take over our minds. The
point I wanted to make very clear, and the one which expanded the most
throughout this project, was the idea that the things we can’t give up, are the
ones controlling us. For example, in the final draft I wrote, “If you can’t give
it up you don’t own it, it owns you.” I wanted to clearly show how it isn’t
random things in life that can take control over us, it is the things that we
could never imagine life without, the things like relationships, money, and
status in society that become our ‘gods’ they are the things which take control
of our life and define us. This idea became very prominent in the final drafts
of my poem and grew in sophistication as the project expanded, which added
greatly to the final effect of my poem, and gave the audience something more to
think about, a way to relate the words I wrote to their own lives.
An important change I decided to make in my poem was formatting, I
originally wrote Puissance evenly
spaced, and pauses in how you read and spoke the poem were only present as
commas and periods. I saw many other poems with breaks between words or lines,
and decided to play around with formatting and spacing. This helped me to create
pauses between lines and words so when being read, it had natural pauses and
intonations without having to use multiple commas and periods. For example,
before I made this it was hard to know how the poem was supposed to be spoken,
because of this; I was the only one who could read it to the effect that I
wanted it to be read from. An important change I made was spacing out the words
in the ending, it changed from “it, owns, you.” To
“It
Owns
You.”
This made the ending more dramatic and as a reader who did not know how I, as the
author, wanted this poem to be spoken, this change made the reading very
dramatic and gave the poem a stronger ending. Formatting my poem to a way of
reading that is not usually seen, made it stronger and will keep the audience
more engaged with figuring out how to speak the poem with the pauses and
intonations where I intended them to be.
Another important change I made to my poem was how I created the rhyme
scheme. I used to think that a poem was not a poem if it did not rhyme; I now
know that is not true as many places in my poem do not rhyme with each other. I
began writing my poem being sure that every word rhymed, however soon found how
hard that is to do, and eventually began to see the effects that cheesiness has
on a poem. After figuring this out, I began to worry less about the rhyme
scheme, and worry more about getting my point across to the audience through my
poem. In earlier versions of puissance I would write something such as,
“It sees
all, a lion roaming its turf
A blizzard
covering the earth
A tower
reaching into the cloud above
You can
never let go, like someone in love.”
Stanzas and lines like this were how my
poem was formed, it sounded choppy and cheesy like I had only written what I had
so that everything rhymed. Which was true, it was hard for me to get out of the
loop of rhyming everything, but once I did, it made my poem much stronger and
easier to read, natural but stronger. After I began to stop worrying about
rhyming all the words, I wrote many strong stanzas such as,
“You stand,
a city in ruins,
ancient,
your power now gone.
Robbed by a
thief in the night it crept in,
You didn’t
realize until the damage was done
It cut
through your life
A river flowing, eroding away everything within. .
Degrading. .
.” There is some subtle rhyming in here, but not every line does rhyme. Even
though it does not rhyme, this was one of the strongest stanzas in my poem. If I
had only focused on rhyming all that was said in this stanza, it would have most
likely come out sounding cheesy and unrefined, however, the subtle use of rhyme
between the words gone and done made this stanza flow well, at the same time as
letting me write what I needed to write to add to the message of power.
One of the last major changes made to my poem was taking out three
stanzas at the very end. I thought I needed these stanzas to wrap up what was
said in the poem, but when looking closer, I realized these three stanzas only
re-said everything I mentioned in my poem, and actually dragged it out and made
puissance almost too long. I decided
that I needed to begin cutting out stanzas to shorten my poem, and learn to say
things in a concise, but still poetic way. I ended up cutting out the last
three stanzas of my poem and ending it on the words, “it owns you.” Before
these stanzas were cut, the poem ended with the words, “do you hold power over
these things? Or do they hold power over you?” This ending definitely wrapped
up what I spoke about here, however, it didn’t seem to flow well with the rest
of the poem, or sound like anything other than someone talking and randomly
asking you these questions. I did not like this and wanted to create an ending
that ended almost abruptly, leaving the audience with something to think about
which was not in the form of two questions. Taking out these stanzas and ending
the poem here took out parts where I repeated myself, and helped to make this
poem more concise and to the point, but still powerful.