Song For Rudy Burckhardt

Copying another writer or poet's work is something that is very foreign to me. We have always been taught from when we are young to never plagiarize and to make all of our work our own. This assignment allowed me to push aside that notion and truly analyze and imitate how a successful poet constructs his work. This allowed me to gain a greater understanding of how a poem is imagined and built.
David Shapiro's poem, "Song for Rudy Burckhardt" references and examines the life of photographer and filmmaker, Rudy Burckhardt. This poem acts as a postmortem reflection on Rudy Burckhardt's work and life. The poem consists of 12 couplets, with 11 of them beginning with, "and so the snow fell." Shapiro, a known collaborator, and friend of Burckhardt

I picked the painter Yvonne Jacquette as the subject of my imitation for her similar painting of the urban landscapes of New York City as her incidental marriage to Rudy Burckhardt. In lieu of the phrase, "And so the snow fell," I decided to use the phrase, "And so the darkness fell," as a reference to Jacquette's building paintings that frequently feature dark skies and backgrounds and fixate on the gleaming lights of the city. Some other notable changes I made was changing one of the lines to, "and covered up one lone tiny airplane," in reference to Jacquette's original inspiration for painting, her view of the city from an airplane, and also referencing the small isolated airplane in her painting, "Empire State Building II". Similar to Shapiro's poem, I decided to end mine by having the darkness creep up the tallest spires in the city and eventually encompass the entire scene which includes of Yvonne Jacquette's work. I attempted to make the darkness transcend nature in my poem by making it almost climb up the towers in the cities like a shadow until everything was engulfed, similar to how Shapiro has the snow cover even the passing

The repetition made it easier to imitate with an interesting form. I was interested in what the poem was about and who Rudy Burckhardt was. The poet, David Shapiro is able to paint a beautiful scene through the way that he crafts about the poem from the snow falling and how it falls onto the different objects throughout the poem. It was difficult to incorporate new words and meaning into the poem while still maintaining its original form. One of the easier parts of imitating this poem was the lack of a rhyme scheme. That made it easier because when choosing my words, I did not have to worry if they rhymed with the previous line. I used the same form as Shapiro did to properly preserve the original repetition in the poem and the way the poem flows. Choosing words and phrases that naturally flowed into the poem took a bit of work so that everything came out smooth and followed the original patterns of pauses from the original. The tone and diction of the text came off as very smooth and relaxed. I tried to imitate this in my poem by not having any major climaxes or conflicts. The poem manages to smoothly flow from line to line without major moments in between. The reflective tone is echoed in my imitation by also reflecting on another artist in a similar field as Burckhardt. There is a clear use of imagery throughout the poem that is used to reflect the changing landscape of the world as the snow