Poetic 3 - Esther Akintoye

Esther Akintoye
March 26, 2009
Poetry – Walk Poetic 3

I actually enjoyed this assignment because I was able to write a walk poem on New York City. I love New York City and when I went there I did a ton of walking so I saw, heard, and felt so much while in the city. Also, I think because of the nature of how New York City is I let myself a little loose and messed around with the line spacing of the poem. This is a very important part of the poem because the way it is arranged provides the sense of direction I had to follow while I was in New York City. I used enjambment to quicken the poem. Longer lines produced a slower feel. For example the first line reads:

Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up. No…Yes. Don’t think, just…

This was my mental state of mind when I had to get up very early in the morning with only about two hours of sleep. I had to catch an early bus to get to New York City. The line is long until I get to the next couple of lines:

Panic or
Get Up and
Panic.

I’m trying to hurry because I’m running out of time to get to where I need to go. One of my favorite parts of this essay is the East/West navigation, or the confusion that I had while I was traveling. I went the wrong way and it took longer to go East than it did to go west. I put West closer to the part that says, “longer than you should have gone” because this phrase represents my starting point. And the second reference to East/West represents my confusion because of the street vendor and Asian ladies in a store who gave me the wrong direction to go. It’s obvious at this point that I was lost.

I intentionally listed the navigation of going south as a list because it made me feel like I was actually traveling south, which in reality I was. This also made me reminisce to my childhood of when I used to live in New York City. When I refer to the point that I went north I was referring to my second move in New York to Yonkers, NY. Then reality breaks this thought off and I was literally traveling up north to Harlem.

Slowly the lines get longer and my energy starts to die down. I get cold, sick and unbelievably tired towards the end of the day. Before I know it I’m back in Philadelphia.