I originally wrote this poem as an imitation poem of Louise Gluck.

However, I must stress that I use the word imitation lightly. For one, Louise Gluck presents a sense of style and language that is all her own, and I find myself unable to truly copy her artistic talent and originality. Reading through her poetry I really enjoyed the way she could take an inhuman object and find a way to give it life. Like her poem, The Red Poppy, I applied this concept and technique to my own poem, The North Star. Originally I began with the concept of the North Star watching over the earth in awe, ending the poem with the image of the star wondering if the inhabitants of the planet ever stopped to gaze upon it, the way that it does upon them. While I did enjoy this concept, I really wanted to explore the content even further. I then began to enjoy the idea of the star watching over the earth during the apocalypse and narrating it. I really wanted to expand the poem, adding more content to really let image and sound drive the poem. As I began to revise my poem even further, I decided to focus on the idea of the earth as a mother, rising up and revolting against all life (its children) on earth. I was influenced by Robert Frosts poem Fire and Ice and wanted to incorporate these two elements into my poem, first by bringing up the image of ice and then fire. The more revisions I did, the more I wanted to expand up the imagery and what was happening to the earth. In the final revision I wanted to focus on making sure the content supported the form and followed logic. I let sound drive the poem with lines like Below, the Earth bubbles and bellows, her belly swelling with exploding bursts of gas and phrases like kerosene cornfields which I particularly like a lot. This poem allowed me the opportunity to take your recommendation of letting the words just flow onto the page. I wanted to take something as commonly addressed as the apocalypse and revamp it with fresh language and non stock images by creating the image of the first human beings taking a rib from the earth and fastening it into a spear. I recognize that I am taking a huge risk in my poem and a lot of liberty through my use of arguably abstract imagery as well as personifying the earth. Nevertheless, I think its these risks that are responsible for giving the poem a certain amount of character that would be unachievable otherwise. I took advantage of this poem and opportunity to write through the eyes of something that I have yet to explore and really challenge myself as a poet. I wanted to creatively express something that has yet to happen. I would definitely say that this is a different type of poem from my usual work, but its definitely one of my favorites.