Original Piece #5

This is an acrostic poem created in lieu of the fraternity "Tau Kappa Epsilon."
The poem reads as follows:

The Halloween party, Saturday night,
A nice fun adventure, such a delight,
Under the moon, in the house of the guys,
Keeping our cool, we were staying quite wise,
Acting aloof, in our costumes we dance,
Playing the part, and then changing our stance,
People dancing everywhere, left and right,
All around the room, under the black light,
Everyone was having, a lot of fun,
Partying until, they felt they were done,
Soon I had to leave, walk back to my room,
I was feeling quite down, a little gloom,
Looking back I kind, of wish I had stayed,
Oh I wonder if, I could have got laid,
Nice party I said, I left unafraid.


Not only is this an acrostic poem, it is an acrostic poem that rhymes and is in iambic pentameter.  The rhyme scheme consists of: AA BB CC DD EE FF GGG.  Since there were an odd number of lines, I had decided to make the last three words have the same rhyme.  After putting the first letter of each of the words together, you get the phrase "TAU KAPPA EPSILON," the name of my community.


The target audience is anyone who is a part of, or enjoys the fraternity Tau Kappa Epsilon.  My poem also appeals to those who enjoy poetry, acrostic poetry, or stories incorporated in poetry.  I really enjoyed how I incorporated the Halloween Party from my field notes, into one, fifteen line iambic pentameter poem.  The poem illustrates the feel of the party, gives a picture of how the party progressed, and describes my emotions throughout the party.

Inspiration Piece #5

This is an acrostic poem.  An acrostic poem is a poem, that takes the first letter of each line and puts them together to make a word, a person's name, a sentence, or a phrase.

The poem reads: 
"Looking back, she often thought
Of all the things for her, he bought
Vases, diamonds, bracelets galore
Each one from an expensive store
"I don't want these things." she tried to explain
"Splurge not on me...I'm not vain"
Still he bought more and more til one night
Take out dinner just finished, he said with a fright.
"Rena, I'm bankrupt. I have no more money"
"As if I want anything else but you honey."
"Next thing you'll say is you loved me for me."
"Go!.. Rena..you're free!...I'm out of your range."
Easy to see how love is strange..."


I struggled with trying to figure out what to have my last genre be.  So in my thinking process, I went to a website called "http://omegle.com/."  This website allows one to talk, video chat, or ask questions to total strangers on the internet.  I proposed a question asking strangers to name the first writing genre that popped into their head.  Through the obscenities, the book genres of sci-fi and fantasy, and the random conversations about how if you eat snow, it dehydrates you; someone mentioned doing a haiku.  This got me thinking to other genres of poetry, which reminded me of acrostic poetry.  I then, using the browser of "https://www.google.com/," searched for examples of acrostic poetry.  Someone asked the question of "Can you write an ACROSTIC poem with "LOVE Is STRANGE" ? (FOR CREATIVITY'S SAKE!)?" and the best response was the poem you read up above.  I enjoyed it, so I took it and posted it for my inspiration.  You can find the original link here.


Acrostic poetry is what you make of it.  As with all poetry, you can choose whether you want to make it rhyme, have a specific iambic meter, or just write using prose.  All acrostic poetry, however, has it so that the first letter of each word spells out something.  Like I previously mentioned, it could be a sentence, a phrase, a word, or a person's name.  It targets many people from mere children, to poetry enthusiasts, to old people, to literature majors, or to anyone else who possesses a creative mind.

Original Piece #4

The Original

This is a self-made Pokémon card made in honor of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Under the word (which in normal Pokémon would be called a move) "Charity" it reads: "Flip a coin.  If heads, heal one of your benched Pokémon by 30 points.  If tails, heal one of your opponent's benched Pokémon by 30 points."  Under the move "Esteem" it reads: "After raising your confidence with Esteem, Charity's effect is doubled during your next turn.  However, after using Esteem, discard all energy cards on Tau Kappa Epsilon."  The description beneath the words that are under Esteem, read as follows: "Tau Kappa Epsilon is a fraternity committed to excellence.  For years Tau Kappa Epsilon has challenged college men to develop themselves, and their leadership abilities."  The card states that the illustrator was Ronald Reagan.

I made this Pokémon card using: http://www.mypokecard.com/en/

I used the name of the fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon, as if it were the name of a Pokémon, and put it wherever a Pokémon's name would go.  For instance, where it says "discard all energy cards on Tau Kappa Epsilon;" a normal Pokémon card would read: (for example, the Shining Charizard card from the inspiration piece) "discard all energy cards on Shining Charizard."  A Pokémon's level cannot be higher than one hundred, but since Tau Kappa Epsilon has been around for one hundred and twelve years, I decided to make that it's level.

The target audience would still be, as with my other originals, anyone involved in, or wanting to be a part of, Tau Kappa Epsilon.  However, it would also include people who enjoy Pokémon cards.  Anybody can appreciate the crafts of the card that I have made.  Using the information from http://www.tke.org/ I was able to include subtle facts into my card.  As I said above, the fraternity is one hundred and twelve years old, so I subtly included that in the card's level.  I also included Ronald Reagan's quote, "Tau Kappa Epsilon is a fraternity committed to excellence.  For years Tau Kappa Epsilon has challenged college men to develop themselves, and their leadership abilities" from his Youtube video that can be found on http://www.tke.org/.

Inspiration Piece #4

This is a "Shining Charizard" Pokémon card.  This has a three-star rarity, thus making it incredibly hard to obtain.  If you were to come in possession of this card, and move it forward and backward, it would shine, and the color of the Pokémon in the picture, Charizard, would change from this shiny white, to orange, to a dark black color.  In searching ebay.com for Pokémon cards that I will never have the extra money for, I came across this beauty, worth $275.95.  On the plus side, it had free shipping.


This genre, a mere Pokémon card, holds many conventions.  On a general Pokémon card, you can find the following: A name, a type, one or two attacks, a description at the bottom, an illustrator's name, a level, a weakness, a resistance, a retreat cost, the amount of HP (Health Points) that the Pokémon has, an image of the Pokémon, and a little bar saying what stage the card is.  The target audience for a Pokémon card is anyone who enjoys Pokémon, young and old, or anyone who enjoys strategic card games.

Original Piece #3

The above image is an erasure poem created using a portion of text from an article about a murder on campus in a TKE fraternity house.  The highlighted text reads: NICK ARMSTRONG PLEDGED TAU KAPPA EPSILON / FELL ASLEEP / N / HE NEVER WOKE UP. / THREE in the morning / Clint Hart / T / K / E / and the house / appeared / empty. / beer/ capped the day / . / Enter / the dilapidated, trashed two-story building / surprised to see / other people / tall / skinny, / longish hair / earring / baseball cap backward / . / other, shorter / stockier / brooding scowl / asleep on the couch / Nick Armstrong / the new / pledge / peaceful / bad feeling / trespasser. / take that guy's wallet / "We're not here to steal," / "We're here to kill."  Instead of the conventional erasing that is used in most erasure poems, I used my own way to give some words more emphasis than others.  I highlighted all of the words that I wanted to stand out with a bring red highlight, and changed the color of the other words to a light gray color to contrast the difference.  I also decided to highlight specific letters of words to make them stand out. Instead of highlighting the whole "Tau Kappa Epsilon" I merely just highlighted the first letters of each word, "TKE."  I also use this technique to change "Entering" to "Enter," and "peacefully" to "peaceful."


The target audience of my work, as per usual, is anyone who is a member of, or is interested in Tau Kappa Epsilon.  However, being that this is a bit of a gruesome poem, it will also target those who have an interest in erasure poetry, and those interested in stories of murder.


When I was researching topics about the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and learning how to use Eastern Michigan University's database, I came across this article:
http://business.highbeam.com/410545/article-1G1-58459365/murder-campus
The article, entitled "A MURDER ON CAMPUS," described the events leading up to the murder of a pledging fraternity member by the name of Nick Armstrong.  I chose this topic, because the red highlight worked well to illustrate the ideas that the poem portrayed.

Inspiration Piece #3

The above image is a piece of Erasure Poetry, a type of poetry that takes a paragraph or more of text and "erases," as the name suggests, parts of the text that the author does not want, in order to create a new idea.  This particular poem reads: a busy scene / created / from the surrounding country. / the square, / a net, / carts / here and there, / A crowd / mingling with / merchandise, and the / merchant, with poultry, / sausages, and goats'-milk cheese / for sale / baskets, oranges, chestnuts, / fruits and nuts. / Here, too, / lounging citizens / gentleman / sauntering / as if caring for nothing, and having nothing to do / Yet a spark of interest / the eye / gave variety to the scene.  The words that are "erased," so-to-speak, from the text appear to be faded out, as if this particular poem was made on the computer.


In looking for easy genres to do to finish this English project, I thought that the example that was given seemed simple enough for me to do, and still be able to sleep at night.  I found it by searching for the blog "http://verywellthenicontradictmyself.blogspot.com/." I then took the top image from the blog, downloaded it, and then uploaded it to my own blog.  The conventions of Erasure Poetry, aforementioned in the above paragraph, include the following: starting from a page of text, usually one or two paragraphs, and then "erasing," or ridding, the text of words that the author does not desire.  This particular piece takes the unnecessary words and fades them out, where as the words the author wanted to stand out, are left alone.


The poem describes, as the text outright states, a "busy scene" with people "mingling with merchandise," which infers people shopping all throughout town.  The audience targeted with the poem, would be anyone who enjoys erasure poetry, who can related to living in a busy city with many merchants, or anyone who has an interest in literature in general.

Original Piece #2

The above image is a screen-shot of the instructions for two ways to have fun in TKE.  Using a step-by-step process, these instructions describe two different ways that the person I interviewed, Pancho Garin, told me he and some guys did to have fun.  Since Pancho gave me two different ways that they have fun, I decided that instead of having two separate instruction sets, that I would incorporate both of them into one set of instructions with two separate options.


The audience that this targets, is anyone who is interested, or a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon, or anyone who is looking for ways to have fun.  Using the ideas of how Pancho had fun with other members of TKE, I created a step-to-step process of how one might be able to relive those memories that he had.  Though it doesn't describe what it means for someone to be in Tau Kappa Epsilon, the descriptions of how they have fun, lives on.