The poem I struggled the most with was the shakespearen sonnet, although I spent the most time on my hypertext poem. I had difficulty with the sonnet because it has so many rules and restrictions— and it's the only one where the topic is predetermined. Love. What type? How do I write about a specific feeling and also fit it into to shape of a sonnet? I spent a while trying to figure it out before finally booking a meeting and once I was told it doesn't have to be about love it was a lot easier to figure out. After some helpful guidence and advice I wrote it about a character who is no longer my favourite but who was for many years and holds a special place in my heart— Link, from Breath of the Wild.
There's no requirement to reflect on my favourite poem for this assignment, but I'm going to do it anyway because I love how my hypertext poem turned out. Using hyperlinks to tell a poem that kept branching off into more poems was the first thing I thought of when I saw the lesson, before I even clicked on it. I'd heard of neocities and tries using it once before, so when google docs proved frustrating making my own little website was the first thing I thought of. Turns out learning basic html is pretty easy! My original hope was to have each poem link to at least one other poem in a never-ending web of thoughts. Even though I didn't manage that, I love how I was able to use the hypertext format to dive deeper into my thoughts in the branching way I tend to think about things. It didn't have to be one thing then the next, it could be this but also this and also that and I have things to say about one of those too. I think it was the only way I could have written a poem about my relationship with my parents, because it's so complicated. Even with everything I wrote (929 words!), I wish I could have spent more time on it. Unfortunately I absolutely spent far longer on this poem this poem than I should have, so I had to cut it off somewhere. I may return and work on it more when I have time, but I'm very pleased with how it turned out as it is.