Recently, students in Ann Marie Hardy's freshman English course wrote Shakespearean-style sonnets using the multiple-draft writing process.  Students were required to follow the Shakespearean sonnet structure which includes fourteen lines, ten syllables per line and a rhyme scheme.  Additionally, students focused on featuring a turning point in the third quatrain as well as writing a conclusion in the final couplet.  Stylistically, students focused on descriptive word choice and purposeful punctuation.  Students received general feedback from Mrs. Hardy and stylistic feedback from their peers.

“I am so impressed with the final products, but even more so the process with which the students used to create their final poems,” Hardy commented.  “Many of my students wrote four or five drafts before they were finished – they exceeded my expectations.”

Flurries
I sit and reflect on snows long since past,
I cannot help but be slightly bitter,
For all the snows of today cannot last,
Though in morning sun it shines as glitter.
The presumed pureness of secluded snow,
Worthless soaking slush polluted and black,
Beneath the ice hides my fear and my woe,
Dislike is made by my nostalgia’s lack.
Know it is only a trivial thing,
To wish for such snow, stuff once known by me,
In night delivered, by White Owl’s wing,
Beauty of virgin snow causes plights flee.
Remember the past, enemies, lovers,
Heated by actions and struck by others.
By: Matthew Cannon

Without Limit
What is ample to the status of our desire?
The spark felt when hunger becomes crave.
When our mind demands to open fire,
As if we have just become a slave.
We are fueled from lust and strengthened to bite.
As the small blaze that swells to a pyre,
The fuse to a heaping pile of dynamite.
Nukes to the army, lust is our fire.
If our offensive is all that we craved,
Our dingy, bloody sword harnessed to us,
Then this is the cause of wars we waged?!
All the years of humanity we regressed?
The beast in us is our desire.
It devours us like a forest fire.
By: Jared Klutke

GRACE
Sitting there in the sun’s utter brilliance;
Lying on the mountain top made of stone;
Below him the entire world is but ants.
The grand land below is what he calls home.

Parting from his palace of serene grace.
To find a strawberry of plump nature.
To advise all to remember their place;
But must remain known for his high stature.

Breaking into the berry’s tender flesh,
As the ripe juice flows on the dirt like blood,
Decadent flavor in the air is fresh.
Because all good things brood in cold, dark, mud.

This amble creature is not very big;
Because he is an average Guinea pig.
By: Robert J. Hawkins

The Love of a Daughter
Beauty of the red rose 'tracts thee with ease.
A treasure, cherished and watered always;
Pampered as if thee must oblige each please.
Delicate red petals handled as fays.
Yet the black dyed rose, oft misses thou stare.
Drooping each day it's been forgot by thee,
Yet bursts of red when nourished at the rare.
Cared as if all thorns, makes black hard to flee.
Gardener is father, as rose is daughter.
But thy beaut red blood is that which she stole.
The black forgot, the red full of water.
If only thou’d love; making thy heart whole.
Thee says is blind, and thou believe it fine,
For how could thee not see the blazed love line?
By: Hannah Minorini

Fire and Ice
The winter air brings whiffs of lodge-pole pine.
Snow ghosts stand tall with arms bent and frozen.
Snow tinkers down, for this snow globe is mine.
This cont'nent's divide, is one I've chosen.
All throughout the land one can hear the sounds
of the wonder, liberation, and peace.
Oh, how my mind is free and my heart pounds;
In this world there can never be a crease.
The devastation of ruin is bitter.
Valid replacement cannot appear from air.
Citizens must clean the mess that hit her,
for we know that this treatment is unfair.
But devoted locals have solid, strong cheer
and amongst bold beauty, there is no fear.
By: Dalia Regev