1 Distant looming Future, what will you bring
2 Trapped by mundane, happiness lost to me
3 Upon my left hand, will there be a ring
4 Held back by young hands, grasping at my knee.
5 Tell me Future; what do you have in store
6 Long nights studying, will I have to face
7 Chances for failure behind every door
8 Growing and changing, might I find my place?
9 Tomorrow, Future, how will you surprise
10 So little time before graduation
11 Most days I don’t want to open my eyes
12 Drowning in a sea of expectation.
13 I can no longer be afraid of you
14 Future, I will pass you for I have to.
Rationale:
We decided as a group to go with the form of Shakespearean sonnet. This style of sonnet, to us, is much simpler, with its “ababcdcdefefgg” rhyme scheme. The division of stanzas also fit well with our idea of the theme of the poem. At first we worried about what our sonnet would be about because it seemed like we had nothing in common. After a few minutes of intense brainstorming, all of us came to the conclusion that it should reflect our worries of the future, not only getting into college, but also life, in college, and after that. The title conveys our uncertainty and concerns about our yet-to-be-discovered road. The first quatrain of the poem starts out with the life we envision about the life of a married woman. The second describes the life of a college student. The last quatrain shows the readers the life of a high school student, particularly a senior. We thought this, created an impending dread zooming in closer and closer into our lives. We hope the readers, as seniors, can relate to this problem.
Analysis:
Form: (line breaks, stanza structure, patterns, pacing, rhyme scheme, rhythm)
Style: (diction, syntax, punctuation, speaker, tone)
The diction in this poem is very important. We chose to use words like you and me because the poem is in the format where the speaker, us, is talking to the future as if the future is a person for example near the end of the poem in line 13 it states “I can no longer be afraid of you”. In this sentence the use of the word “you” makes the future seem like a much more powerful thing. The syntax of our poem is also very critical to understanding it. We use alternate between future and past tense when asking the future what will happen and then putting ourselves in that place for instance in line 1 and 2 it states “Distant looming Future, what will you bring Trapped by mundane, happiness lost to me”. The first line is asking the future what it will bring and the second line is putting the reader in the place of the future and a scenario that may happen then. The sentences are also phrased in a way that they sound almost like questions and that is the way it is intended to be read. This adds to the curiosity part that is later discussed in tone. In our poem each stanza, quatrain or couplet, is a sentence. There are commas where the natural pauses are when we wrote it and read it over. The speaker of this poem is obviously us but if this were read outside of class the speaker would be a high school student who is scared and worried about what is going to happen next in their life. The speaker of the