Nick Vadala Poetic 3

I started this poem a little while ago, in fact it was before I had ever heard of a walk poem. One night, my girlfriend at the time and I walked and took the subway all over Philadelphia until about three in the morning. Throughout the city I noticed a level of decay and violence—as well as a tangible feeling of hopefulness and longing—that compelled me to start writing this poem. I came back to it for this assignment because there have been more important invents in Philadelphia’s history since I started writing it, and I felt like after learning about walk poems, I could add a lot more detail and emotion to the stanzas. So I took another walk and found out not much had changed since I was initially inspired.
I tried to accomplish a one-sided dialogue with the city that asked some questions that I wanted answered at the time, as well as explain some grievances and offer encouragement to the city itself. I decided to arrange the stanzas on the page as they are because each one appears to be a different letter to Philadelphia, and their locations on the page mirrors the walk that I took.
While writing this poem, I learned that I am the kind of person who asks a lot of questions and wants the world, especially Philadelphia, to be the best place that it can be. This poem made me realize that I am a sort of hopeless romantic; whether this is a good thing I have not yet decided. I also learned that I tend to consider places (like cities) as living entities that have their own spirits and can make their own decisions.
The walk poem is different from other poems I’ve been writing in that—to me—it is very sincere and thought provoking. Usually I consider my poems to be rather bland and uninteresting, but I like to think that due largely to the format of this poem, it came out much better than other poems that I have written. In addition, this was a very challenging poem to write in that I had to keep a centralized focus on one specific topic, which is something I almost never do.