Yellow Chrysanthemum: A Remix of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

Link to my poem!

Yellow Chrysanthemum: A Reflection

For my final project, I decided to remix Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (1923) by
writing my own four stanzas of poetry both as a continuation and response to the original. While the
original poet focused on the fleeting nature of youth and death’s inevitability, I sought to challenge the
described bleakness of life with a much more optimistic viewpoint through the extended metaphor of a
flower blossoming in foreign lands. To do this, I decided to draw on my lived experiences from the past
four months in which I’ve discovered a new, yet integral facet of my identity: a daughter leaving home for
the first time and finding her place in womanhood. After all, throughout this first semester of my college
experience, I have indeed felt the sorrow and grief described in “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and yet I
constantly feel that it is even more important to emphasize my new security and radiant joy in entering
adulthood. In other words, the very core of my project is to underscore the beauty of maturation and to
dispel the fear of change that so many existing works have instilled within us, highlighting instead the
richness and fulfillment that come with navigating the unavoidable transformations of life.

Throughout the creative process, I continued to try to wrap my head around the concept of
critique and consistently returned to our class manifesto to supplement my understanding. Every time, my
favorite renditions of Judith Butler’s ideas presented in What Is Critique have been the statement of
critique being intimately linked to self-transformation and the claim that critique is a practice of
improvement. As such, I tried to incorporate both aspects into my remix. Improvement, for one, took hold
in my expansion of the themes introduced in the original and my reworking of its ideas. For example, I
took Frost’s motif of natural imagery– produced through the analogies of spring’s ultimate decay into
winter and day’s transformation to night– and flipped them so that they could tell a fuller story. Instead of
reducing all contentment in life to sorrow and deterioration, the reverse allegories of night becoming day
and new life emerging from a seedling allowed me to argue that there is always gratification hiding
around the corner, no matter how slow it may seem to take. Though it took me four stanzas to get this
assertion across while Frost only needed one, I attempted to reveal my own journey through my poem’s
progression, giving a window into my personal improvement. This realization also led me toward the
concept of self-transformation in critique. Being that it has been many years since my first introduction to
“Nothing Gold Can Stay,” I can confidently say that my understanding of the poem has seen significant
shifts. And I believe that it is these renewed perceptions that act as a lens through which my self-growth
can be observed. From how I see it now, critique is an exercise that leads its practitioners to re-evaluate
their beliefs and identities: a value that the creative process behind my remix similarly guided me to
consider. After all, I consider my project to be a critique of both Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
and of myself.

While I have made it clear throughout this reflection that many of the ideas introduced in my four
stanzas took direct inspiration from Robert Frost’s original poetry, I am a strong believer in the inherent
dependency between one’s creative work and their individuality. Namely, I think the specific details
developed in my poetry stem from the culmination of personal experiences that are unique to me, making
my remix an original that no other individual could replicate down to the tee. A small example of this
could simply be my incorporation of mixed media in which I embedded a supplemental “lyric video” as a
link hidden behind the 1825 Katsushika Hokusai painting. In high school, one of my English teachers
encouraged me to visualize poetry through different mediums when straightforward on-the-page poetry
didn’t appeal, and poetry short films were my solution. Though I didn’t have the means to create a video
nearly as high quality or time-consuming as those that had first garnered my interest in poetry, I drew on
them as inspiration and tried my best to use the new resources Smith offered to create my own rendition.
Additionally, I infused pieces of my cultural background into my writing, as seen in the title “Yellow
Chrysanthemum.” With my Chinese-American heritage being an integral piece of my identity, I channeled
my culture’s use of the chrysanthemum as a representation of vitality and rebirth to further solidify my
outlook on the cycle of life. Thus, the individual skills and interests I invested in the making of my final
project are a testament to the fundamental relationship between remixing, originality, and identity where
one’s identity may be so infused into an existing piece that all that remains is a remix just as original and
distinct.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the outcome of my project and the opportunity it provided for me
to not only return to previous topics we’ve discussed in class, like remixing and originality, but also learn
more about their application. Most importantly, I feel that I’ve finally realized that critique is something
that we’ve been talking about all along and that critique and remix are nearly one and the same. In fact, I
would say that critique and remix are entirely codependent with remix acting as the ultimate catapult
through which personal identity may be expressed to push the boundaries of what an existing piece
already argues and does for society. So, reflecting on my creative process and the final result, I’m happy
to conclude that “Yellow Chrysanthemum” was both a remix and a critique that serves as a reminder that
leaving home and the familiar, facing change and uncertainty, and feeling lost in all that life throws at you
are just stages that will pass; in the end, happiness awaits eagerly.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue. 2001.

Frost, Robert. “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/
148652/nothing-gold-can-stay-5c095cc5ab679. Accessed on 17 Dec. 2023.