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Edmen Chong
English 115
Professor Lawson
11 December 2014
Culture, Pop Culture, and Identity Final Draft
Word Count: 1326
How Culture Shaped my Identity
When talking about culture we realize how great of an impact it has on an individual. A
persons culture could be anything from racial, emotional, and physical. Its unique to that
person and everyone else who falls under the cultures view. Culture affects in a way, we cant
even see, it affects how we speak in public and how we interact with both our friends and
families. It can even help you find friends and partners, it connects people together under one
roof. Whether its talking about the sports team or maybe what the fashion trend is, one
particular subculture interest me. The subculture of poetry and poets have always lingered in my
mind and something about poetry just draws me closer and closer to it. Poetry has given me a
new perspective in everyday aspects, introduced new ways of writings, and even changed the
way I communicate with the people around me.
Each type of poetry conveys a set of emotions and message to the reader and the
audience. In doing so they also change the outlook of the reader and implant a certain message
such as morals, and feelings. An example would be the works of freestyle artist Shane Koyczan,
an author who talks about his past experiences. Through his works he teaches the new and
upcoming generations lessons that he had experienced during his time. For example in his video
To This Day he remembers about a certain time in his childhood that was just down right
terrible. These experiences left an impact on him such as getting bullied to the point of

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contemplating suicide and dealing with drug abuse. He wanted to emphasize the fact that no
matter how hard he wanted to give up, he persevered and lives through each lesson learning to
cheer for no one but ourselves. His struggles relate to what almost every student goes through at
one point or another. The fact that the same problems he went through, we are going currently
facing now such as insults, drugs, and violence makes this poem relatable. This video has had an
impact on me being that my friends were either victims of drug abuse or violence, and it makes
me want to try and make a difference and to change that. Not only has Koyczan taught me about
his conflicts growing up, his other works have a variety of messages ranging from family issues
to much more dramatic issues such as rape and social problems. Other than Koyczan a variety of
other Freestyle Poets who uses their own unique tones and messages all create their work of art
to inspire and set off a chain reaction of positive thinking and a feeling of you can change the
world. In a sense this reflected off me and my major. I never really knew what I wanted to be
until one faithful summer, when my friends started asking me to help them with their personal
problems. At first I didnt know what to do and I was confused as to why they would come to me
and ask me for help. It wasnt until after I watched many poetry videos that I learned a new
perspective and with each video. I tackled a new problem, from relationship issues to family
issues. I actually felt that I had made an impact on them and soon after my tips and suggestions
somehow worked and I found myself declaring a major in Psychology. Now some people might
say how did a couple of videos of people talking nonsense help you decide, what you want to be
when you grow up. I like to think that every poetry ever read or heard as a new problem,
something that needs to be noticed a message or maybe a feeling. In the end it just wants to be
understood and recognized and by reading poetry. I have found out the more I read the more I
learn about how other people feel and how hard it was growing up. To me thats what makes life

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interesting because everyone has a story and a way of expressing themselves and you can never
expect a certain story from everyone because just like a poem it has its own hidden messages and
morals.
Poetry has influence my writing in a sense that it has given my diction and my sentence
structures a little more depth and sophistication. For example words like mastery, bliss, solitary,
and Etc. Have such a good meaning and can easily replace everyday boring and over used words
such as stuff and things. Incorporating these words have not only boosted my vocabulary in
variety of ways but they also helped make my writing much more sophisticated and eloquent.
Poems opened a new type of vocabulary for me to choose from and give my essays a sort of flare
that it needed to improve its meaning. They make writing so much more fun and interesting to
read and revise. When I read poems I also collect ideas from the different poets and try to
incorporate their writing styles into my essays. In the end, I found out that my writing has
improved and along with my vocabulary. Poetry has definitely changed my writing style and I
can see it through the different context and tones I started to use after using the ideas from these
poems. Now to me writing is not just another task that I have to turn in and a get a grade. Its a
task that I enjoy doing and can honestly say its my hobby to write and read other peoples
poems. It relaxes a tired body and makes you think of the world from another perspective
whether from another person around the world, or an inanimate object.
Poetry has a sort of rhythm that brings a boring paragraph to life and narration of its own.
Poems have many different feeling that moves the reader and makes him feel different emotions
for example poems by the famous Edgar Allan Poe have a sort of eerie and frightening tone, also
with Stephen King the eeriness and the melancholy tone gives the readers goose bumps when
they read such poems. As a reader engages in poems they feel as if they are on a journey with

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many twists and turns. But at an instant, the poet could throw in a surprise which makes it even
more engaging and by the end of the poem, you just want to read more and more. You get
engaged and by the end of it all you realize all the different kind of speech that the author uses,
and the sentence structures may seem different at first but they also make you realize and
experiment with different tones and composition. What I like about the special tones and moods
set by each poems is that the authors purposely makes you feel that way. Its amazing to think
that with just a couple words and very clever sentence structures can give off an emotion that
makes you think wow that was amazing and deep.
Poetry has left an imprint on my academic and social life in many ways such as
reformatting my point of views, fixing and improving my paragraphs and essays, and also
changed the way I spoke to friends and to strangers. Through works such as Shane Koyczan, I
learned that no matter how much life sucks, there will always be a silver lining. My sentence
structures and even my essays as a whole improved through the use of different context and a
wider range of sentence structures. Finally, Poetry has changed the way I communicate with the
world and it has opened new ways to say, whats on my mind and how to correctly say it without
it meaning something entirely different.