Things I Learned Last Year

Spiders, however small they may be,
still scare teenage girls tremendously.

Sometimes you can pick things up
without opposable thumbs.

Gregory House took pain meds
for his extremely real leg pain.
But he got addicted to Vicodin,
and he doesn't even need it anymore.

Oprah Winfrey sponsors Weight Watchers,
yet she still has to work on her own fitness.

Hello. It's me. After all these years,
I guess Adele felt sorry for breaking his heart.

When I face death, because it's inevitable,
I want it to be quick.
Like squishing a creepy, crawly spider.
Quick. Painless.

In Kentucky, men are paid to catch ants for
Uncle Milton's Ant Farm Company.
They breed ants. To sell to children.

In my imitation poem, I did just that. I tried to mimic Stafford's Things I Learned Last Week by trying to keep the similar ideas/themes that he used in each stanza and parallel them in my poem. For example, I used a nature topic of spiders for my first stanza, as Stafford used ants. I even tried to use the same number of lines for each stanza that he used; a 2,2,4,2,2,4,3 pattern of the number of lines per stanza. Since I tried to imitate Stafford fairly directly, I attempted to use similar tone that he used for each stanza. For my third, fourth, and fifth stanzas, I tried to use a more lighthearted tone, whereas in stanza 6, there is a more serious tone because of the morbid topic of death. I think that this poem clearly reflects my 2015, representing my binge watching of House M.D. on Netflix, or hearing Hello for 2,000 times. Or even more recently, seeing Oprah on her new commercials for Weight Watchers. 2015 taught me about some celebrities, but also life lessons that anyone could benefit from.