Creative Writing Portfolio Over this course, I have learned a fair bit about analysis. I have looked at poetry, in my metaphor analysis, a visual analysis of the South African flag, and I conducted a discourse analysis of Emerson's "Self-Reliance." These steps taught me three key things. First, they taught me to look at things from different perspectives. Second, they taught me to examine the underlying arguments found in all works of art. Third, the process of writing the responses to those assignments helped me to learn more about constructing arguments.

On the first point, each assignment represented a completely different way of examining something. They were more or less straightforward -- a visual item for the visual analysis, metaphor for the poetry analysis, discourse for the Emerson- but when these three are synthesized valuable lessons about perspective emerge. For example, the flag exercise was ostensibly visual analysis, but it drew upon knowledge of both history and the contemporary reality of South Africa. That is how one understands the visual -- while the flag is certainly striking on its own, without context it is not as effective a visual.

Poetry is the same, where context matters a lot. But poetry also creates visuals that often need to be subject to interpretation the same way that an actual visual will. When a writer creates a scene there are often many elements that contain metaphorical qualities, and there are often elements of context that matter. This is why studying three different ways is helpful. Learning different ways to analyze a work of art or writing is valuable in teaching me the elements that go into constructing a great work. I see that there needs to be a context from which symbols derive meaning. Then symbols are used as a way to convey certain things in a manner that may not be overt. When you read a mainstream commercial novel, for example, there is often a minimum of symbolism -- more likely just surface level descriptions and little depth. So understanding how discourse, metaphor and visual construction all comprise a deeper, more meaningful and lasting work of writing is an important takeaway from this course.

The second thing I learned was to understand the underlying principles and concepts of each. The flag paper was important for this because it was so overt in the design to appeal to the need for racial harmony and the creation of the rainbow nation, as a means of bringing about peace in the land. But the other works had similar underlying themes. These are not always expressed directly, but the reader instead has to examine context and metaphor as clues to determine what the underlying message is.

The third thing is that the act of writing these papers helped me to construct arguments. Each paper asked me to use a specific skill set to break down the work. While deconstructing the work I was constructing my arguments. There were moments in these papers when clearly my efforts were less than stellar -- the arguments were not necessarily that tight. But working through the arguments is a matter of practice. First, I realize that these types of analyses work best when you take the time to understand what you are going to say first, rather than starting to write and then learning as I go. But it is also important to look at how thoughts can come together as a you write -- halfway through a paper you can start to see things coming together, and realize what the conclusion should be. Sometimes this is different from where you thought you were going.

I feel that my ability to understand written works has improved, but so has my ability to express an argument. With more practice, I do not doubt that I will start to be much better at putting these long papers together, but also of seeing the metaphors and visual cues that comprise a lot of complex writing.

There were a few small changes to the papers in the portfolio. For the most part, I was happy with the structure of my arguments. The typos that were highlighted were by and large repaired. I looked for fragments in the poetry paper, but did not find any. We must have different definitions of the word "fragment." I think the issue is not fragments per se, but rather some sloppy construction of ideas. I take that as meaning that I need to learn to convey my ideas more clearly. For example,...

I see that there are points where I was not being especially clear, and that is probably where the confusion comes in.
Some elements of argument construction that I dislike in my work here relate to sentence construction. For example, run-on sentences were pointed out, and there are certainly some of those. But just as bad are the points where the ideas repeat, and even run in circles. Those moments are certainly learning moments for me -- better writing mechanics would result in greater argumentative clarity. I removed an entire paragraph in the flag paper about mining, as this paragraph added nothing to the argument. I can be prone to such asides, and aim to cut them out of my writing.

I changed the word "advert" a couple of times before realizing that this was unfair -- it may not be common in all forms of English, but it certainly is in a lot of English-speaking countries, and therefore is fair game.

So there are some changes that were made, but as a student I am more interested in learning than in chewing over old work, and the process of learning really is more about reflecting on big picture things than worrying about citation style or small mechanical errors. (I fixed the citations, which were quite poor, admittedly). So I placed my focus on understanding the errors to which I am most prone, in particular the habit of starting to write before gathering my thoughts thoroughly. This is where the run-on sentences come from, and it is also where I struggle to effectively clarify my ideas.

It is probably also worth pointing out that truly clear writing is concise -- writing to a page county is a recipe for rambling if one fails to realize that blank spaces equate to the need for more analysis. That is something I think I needed to learn -- if I feel like I need to fill space what that really means is that I need another good idea. Sometimes you have to learn these things the hard way.

To me, the peer feedback was quite useful, because of the way it spurred me to think about the faults in my writing. I don't take criticism at face value, but rather I feel it is more valuable to look to the underlying issues. So if someone says they don't understand because of fragments, and I don't see fragments, I realize that the fragments are not literally fragments but fragmented, incomplete ideas on which I am trying to construct an argument. So I must strengthen my ideas in order to strengthen my writing.

For me to give feedback also shows me the approaches that other people take. Learning how a peer conceptualizes something is valuable; it helps me to understand the things that I do well and the things that I do not. Thus, this exercise was quite valuable, because it showed me the perspective of a fellow learner, someone who makes mistakes -- ones I've learned to spot, and ones I had to learn to spot. There may even be things that I missed because I haven't learned them yet.

All told, I feel that I started learning more when I started focusing on the high level analysis. The three approaches helped me to do that, to start to see the commonalities between the three approaches, and the differences. Further, by taking that step back I was able to learn how to improve my writing a lot in the future, by understanding key conceptual mistakes, and the structural and mechanical errors that I commonly repeat. Making a mistake once is just something that happens, and the easiest way to improve quickly is to remove the repeat errors.

Antjie Krog's Country of Grief and Grace

Abstract

African literature, especially poems, are the least analyzed, discussed or celebrated irrespective of the fact that it dates back as far as the ancient Egyptian and biblical times. This paper is a Metaphor analysis of the poem: County of Grief and Grace by Antjie Krog. Antjie Krog is a white female South African poet, who writes mainly in Afrikaans. Much of Krog's writing, in particular, comes from the place of deep oppression that was apartheid. Krog used poetry as a means of writing during apartheid-era South Africa, a time during when you could not openly…