These three poems were originally written in 1988 during a college creative writing class, part of a series of assignments that explored emotion, mood, and poetic form. Though the emotions expressed in them weren’t always directly my own, the exercises challenged me to inhabit emotional spaces with honesty and clarity, something that still resonates with me as both a writer and teacher today.
I’ve lightly revised them for punctuation and rhythm, but their core remains untouched as simple explorations of grief, loneliness, and stillness through the lens of youthful imagination and the pressure of deadlines.
As someone who now teaches poetry, I also see these pieces as useful teaching tools: early drafts that show how emotional language, sensory detail, and structure can create resonance even in small spaces.
OH GOD
Cold, unfeeling words spoken
Gut-rending agony
Hot gushing tears
Unending emptiness
Through a haze I heard
“You have cancer.”
Hours of prayer
Days of crying
Nights with insomnia
Weeks of chemotherapy
Months filled with worry
Calm acceptance of my fate.
Smell of death
Taste of despair
Moods of depression
Feelings of desperation
Realization of time passed
My two months are over
“God, where are you now?”
EMPTINESS
Standing all alone, bare arms outstretched
There is nothing but the earth and sky.
No one to speak to.
Neither birds nor wind disturb the silence.
Nothing but nature.
A lone tree in a wide, empty field,
Surrounded by withered grass and dying leaves.
ALONE
The sun is shining.
The wind is blowing.
I am blue.
The birds are singing.
The children playing.
I am lonely.
The moon is glowing.
The stars are twinkling.
I am sad.
🎓 Mini-Lecture or Reflection: Teaching Poetry Through Simplicity
Poetic Restraint: Teaching Emotion Without Excess
These poems are examples of what I sometimes call quiet poems. They don’t shout or demand attention with ornate language, but they work because they are controlled, structured, and emotionally clear. They rely on juxtaposition, imagery, and repetition to create their emotional impact.
When teaching poetry, especially to beginners, I often find value in assignments that remove the pressure of being personal and instead challenge the writer to craft emotion. “Write a sad poem,” “Describe emptiness,” or “Capture contrast between inner and outer worlds.” These can push students to explore how language alone can evoke feeling, whether or not it’s drawn from life.
These three poems offer good teaching moments:
- “OH GOD” shows how escalation and structure (days, weeks, months) create a progression of emotional weight.
- “EMPTINESS” uses imagery and metaphor (the lone tree) to externalize an inner emotional state.
- “ALONE” relies on contrast and repetition, highlighting the dissonance between joyful surroundings and private sorrow.
I often challenge students to revise a piece like “ALONE” in multiple ways: remove conjunctions, change the setting, alter the emotional tone. It shows how even small changes in syntax or punctuation can shift the entire emotional register of a poem.
These are not masterpieces, but they’re good exercises. And that, for a poet-in-training, is where the gold is.
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