I want to submit this essay to the common app online for the school's I am applying to as an incoming freshman applicant. My essay is about my love of poetry... please give me feedback of how I can improve it, and any general questions/thoughts you may have. Thank you!!
]Capturing Life
Halfway between consciousness and the insanity of my dreams, it struck me. Like open water charged
by a thousand volts of lightning, my mind ran wild in a current of electrifying thoughts. It was as if for
the first time, I was truly awake-to the touch of the cool cotton sheets under my skin, the flickering
rhythm of the orange lights dancing through my closed eyes, and the rush of the wind as they flew by
my open window.
But what I sensed most was just how quickly time was passing me by.
Bolting out of my bed, I blindly crashed through the darkness and felt around for a pen and paper. I
couldn't allow life to escape me anymore.
I sat down on the floor of my room, took a deep breath and exhaled in a steady stream of ink.
Poetry is how I capture life. I want to create what is otherwise ineffable, and I have found that the
gift of transferring magic and emotions into the mind of another to be one of the greatest joys I have
known.
Yesterday, I looked through my old photos stored away in a dusty box. Right before me, lied my entire childhood, my fondest memories.
I saw pictures of my first steps, the toothy grin of an eight year old and warm, lazy nights catching
fireflies in the yard of our old Tennessee home.
As beautiful as they were, they told only an incomplete story. The patent 4x6 voices fell weak to bring to
life the muted versions of myself that stood before my eyes.
My childhood cannot be relived and I can never feel again what I knew in those moments. With the
smile painted on my lips, rose a twinge of pain rose in my heart, as I realized memories, like time often
us.
In its singularity, creating life is perhaps a poet's greatest challenge, to pen a work that when read
and reread, evolves into an entity that both lives and breathes.
Carl Sandburg once said, "Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance."
But my writing is not only how I choose to remember the ghosts of my past, it is also how I make sense
of the present and hope for the future.
It is where I have found liberation in my vulnerability and have heard myself both weak and strong in my
self-discovery. My words have become a catharsis much more powerful than pain or tears, laughter or
joy. They are an anthology that envelops time and like life, are always moving.
Unlike my box of memories, my poetry is a universal language and what I speak to others will never find
itself lost in translation.
As I add more chapters to my collection of life, I cannot help but feel I have somehow managed to hold
on to the past while moving forward to paint visions for my future.
]Capturing Life
Halfway between consciousness and the insanity of my dreams, it struck me. Like open water charged
by a thousand volts of lightning, my mind ran wild in a current of electrifying thoughts. It was as if for
the first time, I was truly awake-to the touch of the cool cotton sheets under my skin, the flickering
rhythm of the orange lights dancing through my closed eyes, and the rush of the wind as they flew by
my open window.
But what I sensed most was just how quickly time was passing me by.
Bolting out of my bed, I blindly crashed through the darkness and felt around for a pen and paper. I
couldn't allow life to escape me anymore.
I sat down on the floor of my room, took a deep breath and exhaled in a steady stream of ink.
Poetry is how I capture life. I want to create what is otherwise ineffable, and I have found that the
gift of transferring magic and emotions into the mind of another to be one of the greatest joys I have
known.
Yesterday, I looked through my old photos stored away in a dusty box. Right before me, lied my entire childhood, my fondest memories.
I saw pictures of my first steps, the toothy grin of an eight year old and warm, lazy nights catching
fireflies in the yard of our old Tennessee home.
As beautiful as they were, they told only an incomplete story. The patent 4x6 voices fell weak to bring to
life the muted versions of myself that stood before my eyes.
My childhood cannot be relived and I can never feel again what I knew in those moments. With the
smile painted on my lips, rose a twinge of pain rose in my heart, as I realized memories, like time often
us.
In its singularity, creating life is perhaps a poet's greatest challenge, to pen a work that when read
and reread, evolves into an entity that both lives and breathes.
Carl Sandburg once said, "Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance."
But my writing is not only how I choose to remember the ghosts of my past, it is also how I make sense
of the present and hope for the future.
It is where I have found liberation in my vulnerability and have heard myself both weak and strong in my
self-discovery. My words have become a catharsis much more powerful than pain or tears, laughter or
joy. They are an anthology that envelops time and like life, are always moving.
Unlike my box of memories, my poetry is a universal language and what I speak to others will never find
itself lost in translation.
As I add more chapters to my collection of life, I cannot help but feel I have somehow managed to hold
on to the past while moving forward to paint visions for my future.