Eliza Jane Schaeffer Assignment 2

The Horrible Place that I Love

Massive, labyrinthine,

Alien, too close

For comfort.

“Who stepped

On my heel?”

Walk fast.

I don’t know

What to say.

I am a

Pack mule

Slaving away.

Cornell notes,

Preview questions,

Busy work.

Collecting horror stories

Of junior year.

“It was the

Best of times,

It was the worst.”

I found my

People and my

Passion.

But the workload

Was torturous.

Last year my

Superpower of choice

Was invisibility.

But now I’d

Like to be

Peter Pan.

And stay here

a little longer.

My poem is full of contradictions. My syntax was very short and choppy to demonstrate that high school has gone by extremely quickly. However, the poem overall was very long because high school also seems like it has been forever. The words I use throughout the entire poem (torturous, horror, slaving, alien, massive, labyrinthine) all have very negative connotations, but when I get to the end, I say I'd like to stay forever. So, although it was a negative experience, it was also a profoundly positive one. The allusion to Peter Pan in the third to last line further illustrates that point. Neverland was a utopia of sorts, where children could be children forever. Peter Pan never aged. The word "labyrinthine" is also an allusion because it conjures images of massive mazes (which is a good way to describe Henry Clay). The image of a "pack mule slaving away" demonstrates how hard I worked during sophomore year when I had all of that World History and Psychology homework.