Artist’s Statement

In order to complement my analysis on Aristotle’s guidelines for stories, as Aristotle described in Aristotle’s Poetics, I wrote four poems, each of which corresponded to a couple of Aristotle’s guidelines to a certain degree. For example, one of the poems followed none of Aristotle’s guidelines, and another poem followed many more of Aristotle’s guidelines. The poems are arranged in numerical order. The poem which follows the least amount of the guidelines is Poem One. Poem Four follows the most of the guidelines, while Poems Two and Three are in between. The guidelines in Aristotle’s Poetics that some of my poems follow are the guidelines that state that only men, and not women, can be noble and strong in fictional stories, as well as the guidelines that state that characters should carry out their actions in a story for a reason rather than doing things for no reason at all. I also discussed these guidelines in my analysis. I described how gender stereotypes can cause stories or poems to be cliché and uninteresting, and how the time period in which Aristotle lived most likely influenced his sexist beliefs about women and men. I also described how having characters do things for a reason makes stories more interesting because it makes the story more engaging and interesting for the reader. As well as describing these guidelines in my analysis, I also used them to discuss each of the poems in my creative response. I described the guidelines and why they were included or not included in each poem. I also used Voyant to create word clusters for each poem. The word clusters showed which words were used the most often. Seeing which words are used the most often gives the reader an idea of which themes are most important in the poem.