The New New Orleans                                       By: Jaggy(that's me!)

It was a day like any other.                                      1
Tourists and citizens alike swarmed the walkways.
A city where one could feel lonely in a crowd,
And social heterogeneity is acceptable for lack of care.
just an average day in New Orleans.                                  5

The air was humid and warm,
Hot and sticky people brushed past one another,
Perspiration gathered on faces without a breeze to cool.
strata clouds blocked out the sky and the wind was calm and still,
A palpable tension loomed over the city, until a siren, sharp as a knife, cut through it.    10

It was a warning of soon to come disaster.
Winds began to howl and the clouds rained bullets.
The sound of water hitting earth thrummed like the constant beating of drums.
Jagged lightning made its heedless caper across the sky as thunder chanted it on.
Day turned to night in an instant, bringing shadows to the growing terror.              15

Citizens fled and took shelter, the unlucky left stranded to perish.
The fresh scent of wet earth usually accompanied by rain was meager
violent gusts tore signs from their posts and threw them about.
A blanket of water covered the street, drowning the earth,
Windows were blown out of buildings and vehicles submerged.                  20

Katrina was a wolf pack tearing apart her static prey,
The city, a defenseless deer slumping down in the agony.
A gut wrenching, heart pounding terror filled the civilians.
Water, a flowing, peaceful friend, had become a merciless enemy.
New Orleans was damned, becoming a chaotic hell on Earth.                  25

Six Hours. Six hours was all it took for much of the city to be in shambles.
In just a quarter of the day the people were witness to a nightmare of anguish and torment.
Fearing for their life's, not sure if they would live.
Many did not survive, many more left homeless.
For the city, it was like a war had just taken place, and they had lost.              30

The escapees of the flooding returned to a ravaged and ruined wasteland.
Trees had been toppled, vehicles and buildings submerged and destroyed, trash littered streets.
One heavy emotion remained hanging in the air: despair.
And the city wept.
They cried together over the deaths, ruin, and hard work lost.                  35

In this moment of misery, the people were able the find comfort in eachother.
They all knew what it felt to be utterly hopeless and afraid.
They were all survivors of a terrible trial sent by the gods.
Through this realization, the city became connected.
Every single person could share a piece of similarity to another                  40

Through anger over the injustice brought upon the city, the people were united.
A new sense of determination now filled the heart of New Orleans,
And so, the rebuilding began.
everything was made new, better than ever, with more schools and less crime the city thrived.
New Orleans was made beautiful again.                              45

Through all the projects and organizations,
The support and help of the rest of the country,
And the hard work of those brought together,
Rubble was cleared,
And cleared land was built upon.                                  50

One would be lucky to bear witness to nature's own gift to mankind for their perseverance,
For within the wreckage still present from that malevolent hurricane,
There blossoms a tiny sprout, just a little curl of green,
And with it blooms the beginnings of hope.
The new New Orleans that was destined to be.                         

Uhhh... your gonna wanna ignore the next part. It's just an analysis paper on the theme.

The New New Orlean's Lesson
Hiromu Arakawa once said, "It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful." The lesson that the poem The New New Orleans by Lila French is that there is beauty in destruction. Through the devices that are metaphor, simile, and symbolism, the poem can show this message.

Three types of figurative language are used in this poem that help articulate the universal message. The first device used by the author to express the message is metaphor, "Katrina was a wolf pack tearing apart her static prey, the city, a defenseless deer slumping down in the agony" (French, 21-21). Hurricane Katrina is being called a wolf pack that is devouring New Orleans, which is a dainty deer. The way this shows the lesson is while wolves may seem brutal and violent when they tear apart their prey, it is also only a natural part of nature. Nature is like a two sided coin in the sense that it can be cruel on moment and kind the next. The animals that wolves eat keep them alive, and the remains of the animal decompose and put nutrients back in the soil, from which mushrooms, flowers, and other plants can then grow. These plants may then be eaten by herbivores, like the deer, later on. In other words, the hurricane shows the beauty of nature, destroying so that new life can be remade better than before. The second device the author uses is simile, "For the city, it was like a war had just taken place, and they had lost"(French, 30). War is both harmful and helpful, it causes the death of thousands and the destruction of homes but at the same time unites people with a common enemy. War is a horrible thing, but everyone on either side is fighting for a reason, and that reason is their cause. Soldiers are heroes to their country, and we all appreciate them for putting their lives on the line for us. Basically, the beauty in the chaotic war is the linked and unified people that work together to fight for their families and their country with bravery and honor. The third and final device Lila French used in her poem to show her her lesson is symbolism, "There blossoms a tiny sprout, just a little curl of green, and with it blooms the beginnings of hope" (French, 53-54). The significance of this flower in the end shows how like nature, the city moves on and builds anew. Once the natural disaster was over, nature moved on and continued to thrive. With the city, the people gathered themselves and pulled together to clean and rebuild new sites on the damage. In other words, the flower bud symbolizes the people, growing and spreading itself out to continue living even after tragedy strikes. All in all, figurative language devices were used to demonstrate and support the universal lesson of the poem.

The teaching given through this poem is that there is a discreet charm to chaotic situations. The way the author displayed this throughout the poem is through the use of devices that give titles that are not literally applicable, use comparisons, and represent something else in a discreet way. The meaning of Arakawa's quote could be directly related to the universal message of this poem, for it is the truth that chaos is beautiful in its own way, people just have to look at the little details of the big picture.