A Person/A Paper/A Promise is by far my favorite poem. It may not be the best poem ever written, but it expresses feelings and situations that I, as a human being and especially as a teenager, can relate to very deeply. The author describes a series of situations in the life of a person that resemble our own experiences or those of people we know. He manages to create a deeply affecting and poignant mood and compassionate, sympathetic feelings in the readers. The poem is divided into four stanzas, each of which narrates an episode in a boy's life. In each of the stanzas, the events and the people revolving around them are described, and in the following stanza, we read about how those events or people have changed and why. In every stanza, the boy writes a poem about a different subject, which we're led to believe is of major importance to him. The topics of his poetry change as he grows up, from his dog to the season, from his girlfriend to, in the final stanza, "Absolutely Nothing". These changes show us how the boy's perspective of life constantly evolves. As a narrative poem, A Person/A Paper/A Promise has all the elements of a short story, including a rising action, which begins in the second stanza with his discoveries about how the people and things he took for granted, such as Santa Claus or Father Tracy, his priest, or sex, even, are not what they seemed at first. This rising action intensifies in the third stanza, when the kid, already grown-up now, is jaded, doing things because he has to, his family life being practically non-existent. This situation inevitably leads to the climax in the fourth stanza, when they boy writes his final poem, "Absolutely Nothing", and commits suicide. Basically, over the years his life changes from "perfect" to meaningless, empty and chaotic, and he decides to end it. To me, this poem represents why we must rely on our inner strength when difficult situation arises and not giv...
