Chameleons

For black history month my english class was asked to research a black, renaissance writer. After researching, we created a biographical presentation on the person, annotated five of their poems or writings, and then created our own poem mimicking some of the elements of the poets style. Below is my poem "Chameleons" and the analysis that gives a description of how my poem paralleled the commonalities of Gwendolyn B. Bennett's poems.

I transform,

From student to athlete to class officer and more.

I watch my classmates adapt,

The state champion athlete, in an instant, becomes the leading role in the musical.

We are all chameleons.

You ask, “how are a group of kids Chameleons?”

Well, I ask you, “what do chameleons do?”

To survive, they change colors.

We don’t change colors.

Riverview students, change “uniforms” to ensure the survival of activities at the school.

Kids sprinting from class, down to the locker room to change for a game,

Bolting back upstairs in dress clothes to give a speech or presentation.

We work as a community, just as animals do,

To keep programs and sports alive.

All for the purpose of allowing future students to become more than just students,

For them to become chameleons.

We take pride in our ability to step outside of the box.

We refuse to stay within one category,

Just as chameleons refuse to remain as one color.

My poem “Chameleons” was inspired by a college essay I wrote about a community I was a part of. I took my inspiration and combined it with the many elements Gwendolyn B. Bennett uses in her own writing to create my poem. Writing the college essay allowed me to do one of my favorite things, it allowed me to reflect. I was able to reflect on my role in the Riverview community, and it made me realize, none of us have a stationary role at Riverview. Every student, is more than just a student. With limited numbers of kids in the district, we are all forced to step outside our “assigned roles” and join clubs and teams ranging from music, to student government, to sports. If we didn’t do this, clubs wouldn’t survive. There wouldn’t be enough people to keep the clubs alive. Changing “colors” or “uniforms” and “jumping out of the box,” is the reason Riverview has successful clubs and teams. Seeing all of the amazing opportunities I have taken advantage of at Riverview gives me confidence as I embark on my college experience. I will continue being a chameleon, trying new activities, even if it’s no longer for the purpose of keeping the activity alive.

I decided on my poem topic by looking at Bennett’s typical topics and symbols. In most cases, Bennett chooses to write about her community, traditions, and anything she is passionate about. Examples of Bennett’s poems that include these topics would be “Heritage,” “Hatred,” and “Song.” Through these poems Bennett is able to express her passions and emotions, both positive and negative. She shows readers her true feelings about her community and the things they face. My experience at Riverview covers these areas. Riverview is a part of my community and the school and the activities I do through the school are things I am very passionate about. While reflection is not necessarily a tradition, it’s something I try to do often, and it is what I did to create my college essay, and in turn, this poem. In my poem I express my unique experiences as a chameleon. When I talk to students from other schools, it is clear Riverview is a different community. Kids from other schools live in the boxes that Riverview students work hard to get out of.

After deciding on my poem topic, I looked at the elements included in Bennett’s poems. Throughout most of Bennett’s poems a metaphor is used to clearly express her point of view. The clearest metaphor Bennett uses is in her poem “To Usward.” In this poem Bennett compares the people in her community to ginger jars on a shelf. She says “Let us be still / As ginger jars are still / Upon a Chinese shelf.” This metaphor is used to connect readers to the idea that the role of women in history was to be self-contained and proper. As the poem continues Bennett encourages women to break from the norm and write their own traditions and expectations. I linked this idea to my own poem in multiple ways. I used the metaphor of comparing Riverview students to chameleons. I used chameleons because chameleons change colors to survive, and students in the district go from activity to activity to ensure clubs survive at the school. The other connection between “To Usward” and “Chameleons” is the idea of leaving the ordinary. As mentioned, at many other schools’ students are labeled as “an athlete” or as a “class officer,” but at Riverview, these stereotypes are essentially nonexistent. In my poem I state that “the state champion athlete, in an instant, becomes the leading role in the musical,” proving that we shed the common clichés. This is a parallel to Bennett’s poem because she convinces women to leave the general stereotypes and traditions that are placed on them.

An interesting poetic device Bennett seems to avoid is rhyme schemes. While reading and annotating her poems, I noticed that none of them have a definitive rhyme scheme, but many times it seems as though Bennett “rhymes” the same word with itself. What I mean by this is, Bennett starts or ends one line with a word and starts or ends the following line with the same one. In “Song,” three consecutive lines are “Sing a little faster / Sing a little faster / Sing!” In this case, “sing” is used to start all of the lines and “faster” ends two out of the three lines. I emulated this device in “Chameleons” by ending a few lines with the same words and not having a rhyme scheme. “We are all chameleons. / You ask, “how are a group of kids Chameleons?.../ To survive, they change colors. / We don’t change colors,” in these few lines I repeat the ending word “chameleons” and “colors.”

In multiple poems of Bennett’s, she chooses to use speak as a part of a group. This use of diction, using words such as “us” and “we,” is another idea I decided to incorporate into my poem. Throughout “Chameleons” I wrote using the word “we,” meaning I was speaking for all Riverview students as a group. Bennett speaks for her community of women in “To Usward.” The frequent use of the word “us” in the poem stuck out, because it showed that the thoughts Bennett was expressing were common amongst her community.

Using all of the devices described above and more, Bennett is able to create detailed images in readers minds. I attempted to do the same, I hoped to create a detailed image of students transforming into all of the different “characters” they play: “Kids sprinting from class, down to the locker room to change for a game / bolting back upstairs in dress clothes to give a speech or presentation.” My description of kids changing “colors” or “uniforms” was meant to parallel Bennett’s in-depth descriptions, such as “the slim palm-trees / pulling at the clouds,” depicted in “Heritage” or “a woman with lips made warm for laughter” in “Lines Written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas.” Being able to take inspiration from Gwendolyn B. Bennett and use it in my own writing was exciting. I enjoyed seeing how my writing naturally linked with Bennett’s and also, how it was difficult to change my own writing style to emulate someone else’s. I hope my poem was able to bring justice to the many successes and accomplishments of Bennett!