When I first read the prompt to this essay, I thought to myself; “This is gonna stink.” However, as I kept thinking about what Professor Kaufman wanted us to do and I thought more about poetry, I came up with an idea that I wasn’t sure whether or not it would go well. I tried it anyways. I ended up writing my paper on one of the most amazing poets of our time and one of his most influential poems. I wrote about Tupac Shakur’s Changes. It is an inspirational masterpiece, but one must really look beyond the overarching idea of change in the world, to what he is really saying. Well that’s what I talked about in my essay and I just dissected it to the best of my ability. There were some troubles I had along the way.
For one, my thesis was a bit shaky when I first wrote it, but by the time it came to what I did for my first draft, I thought it was pretty solid with just the need for a little improvement. Also, it was difficult to write and interpret each of his verses, or lines, because sometimes I would read a line and conjure about 10 different meanings from it. The more in depth I got into it, the more I realized that I can do the same with just a word or phrase, instead of a line or verse. It became difficult to try and stay on track with my essay because of the numerous interpretations that I was reading into each line. I always thought that poetry was just a certain way, right or wrong, but after this experience I learned that poetry has so many messages that one reader can have an unlimited amount of interpretations for just one line.
