Patricia Smith

Blue Flower Arts

PO Box 1361
Millbrook, New York 12545

Christopher Moreno
1191 South Street Avenue
Town City, California 13254

September 7, 2014
Dear Ms. Smith,
Out of a variety of reading choices, I picked your poem 13 Ways of Looking at 13 as the topic
for my English assignment. I have been introduced to a variety of new and interesting pieces of
writing in my first few weeks in college. This is where your poem comes in.
I was used to reading epic poems, sentimental poems, haikus, etc. Your poem actually did not
look like a poem to me when I first went over it. It seemed more like a series of journal entries.
The main ideas of each followed likewise. I was very touched by the personal feelings you wrote
into the stanzas. It feels like each is a new day that was a new experience in the life of this 13year old girl.
In high school, our English teacher mostly went over first person narratives or third-person
dramas. Your poem was the first place I have encountered the second-person and the way you
utilize it is interesting. Though you do use you in every other sentence, it never feels like you
were talking about the reader personally. Actually, it feels like you were the girls feelings
written down and we, the readers, are simply looking in on the girls internal conflict. This was
mostly apparent in the situations where you were talking about body image. Age 13 is a
harrowing time for girls. Up to that point, most girls were playing pretend, dressing up like
princesses, fairies, or someone else they admired; their role models were their parents and dolls.
At age 13, the world starts signaling to them that it is now a new era for them: an era of image, of
boys, and of being liked. The image at the end, when the girl puts her dolls on her shelf resounds
deeply. Shes not only putting away her once favorite pastime, shes putting away her childhood.
In fact, she came to that point that all girls and boys come to: Rebellion. The way in which the
girl planned to walk out her house in normal clothing but then change into a more revealing
outfit in the bathroom sounds exactly how a rebellious girl would wear clothes which her mother
doesnt want her wearing. And as a bonus, she was not only trying to go against her mothers
word to follow the times, but was also challenging an old way of thinking. More specifically, she
was not confident in her mothers judgment concerning white people. While her mother
reserves special treatment for them, the girl questioned what makes them special. Im curious,
Ms. Smith: Is she wondering why her mother is especially respectful of white people, or is she
questioning why some people receive special treatment? In either case, it is exactly what an
adolescent would consider.
A very big point you touch on is how the girl feels about boys. Attraction and the want to be
attractive are not exclusive to teens. It is an old and almost primal instinct. You introduced it to
us in the perspective of a young woman. A young woman who is very embarrassed about her
first time of the month, who practices her walks to have boys swoon at her passing, who wears

corsets to seem slimmer yet curvier. These are old problems that are very real experiences for
countless girls all over the world.
While writing this letter to you, I realized that this is not a coming of age story, but a story about
aging. It is about the new problems that come with maturing. And with each day, there is a new
problem. What is a girl to do? I like the overall feeling you put into this poem. The self-reflection
feels like there will never be a book that maps out how to grow up, but that there will always be
countless stories about the problems of growing up. I never understood before, but I finally know
what growing pains are.
I am curious about stanza six. I have no idea what its about. You described a variety of
different-tasting foods juxtaposed together into strange dishes, but thats all I understood. Is it
supposed to stand for a bigger idea, or should it be taken at face-value?
Overall I like the writing style you used. It doesnt feel like we are being narrated to or that a
story is being told. This doesnt feel like a chronological order of events. The passages are
written as a stream of consciousness. I felt as if I was the girl, lying in bed thinking over all these
things and what it means to be thirteen-year-old girl.
Thats very impressive considering I am an eighteen-year-old boy.

Sincerely Yours,

Christopher Moreno