The Story of My Anger, The Poetry of Car Mechanics, and Frankenstein

Before we get started, I have to say that Melanie is one of the great ones. When I landed at The University of Georgia to work on my PhD I ended up having Melanie as an office mate. She was brilliant and kind. I also thought I was a big reader, but quickly found out that Melanie read two or three books for every one I read. 

When Jackie Bach and I were considering applying to be editors for The Alan Review, the most inportant contribution I made was suggesting that we include Melanie.. We did and it was a great move. 

Over the last twenty years I have learned to trust Melanie. Her work is fantastic and every time I work with her or read something she has done I learn something new.

Thanks  Melanie.

Meet our Contributor: Melanie Hundley

Dr. Melanie Hundley is a Professor in the Practice of English Education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College; her research examines how AI, digital and multimodal composition informs the development of pre-service teachers’ writing pedagogy.  Additionally, she explores the use of AI, digital and social media in young adult literature.  She teaches writing methods courses that focus on AI, digital and multimodal composition and young adult literature courses that explore diversity, culture, and storytelling in young adult texts. She teaches AI and literacy courses including AI and Storytelling. Her current research focus has three strands: AI in writing, AI in Teacher Education, and Verse Novels in Young Adult Literature She is currently the Coordinator of the Secondary Education English Education program in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College.

The Story of My Anger, The Poetry of Car Mechanics, and Frankenstein by Melanie Hundley

Across genres and centuries, writers have used powerful imagery and emotional intensity to explore what it means to feel broken, misunderstood, and determined to survive. For those of you who share my love of verse novels, I have two amazing works to introduce: The Story of My Anger by Jasminne Mendez and The Poetry of Car Mechanics by Heidi E. Y. Stemple. Both novels offer rich, beautiful poetry and deeply relatable narrators. What I find especially powerful about these works is their language; each layers vivid imagery, precise diction, and emotionally charged metaphors to capture the experience of feeling fractured while still reaching toward healing. Through sensory detail and striking figurative language, the speakers transform anger and grief into expression, allowing readers to witness not only their suffering but also their resilience that carries them forward.

Currently, I am working with teachers who are teaching Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  As I working and creating materials for the two verse novels, I am noticing powerful connections among the three texts. All three works reveal the painful struggle of being defined by the perceptions and expectations of others. In The Story of My Anger, Yuli resists cultural stereotypes and silencing forces that attempt to shape her voice and identity, transforming anger into self-definition rather than submission. In The Poetry of Car Mechanics, Dylan finds peace in poetry, car mechanics, and bird watching; he finds challenges in family and expectations. In Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley crafts a creature whose appearance dictates how others treat him, forcing him into a monstrous role he did not choose. Together, these texts illustrate how identity can be imposed from the outside and how individuals must struggle to reclaim the right to define themselves.

The connection to Frankenstein lies in the shared exploration of alienation, identity, and the longing to be understood. In The Story of My Anger and The Poetry of Car Mechanics, the speakers use poetic language to express feelings of being misunderstood, judged, or defined by others. Similarly, the Creature in Frankenstein struggles with rejection and isolation, shaped by society’s fear and cruelty rather than his own intentions. All three works reveal how being labeled or rejected can fracture one’s sense of self, while also showing the human desire for connection, recognition, and dignity.

Additionally, imagery plays a crucial role in each text. Shelley uses stark descriptions of light, darkness, and deformity to mirror the Creature’s emotional suffering, while Méndez and Stemple employ lyrical imagery and metaphor to give voice to inner turmoil. Together, these works demonstrate how language and imagery can transform pain into expression and challenge readers to reconsider who is truly “monstrous” — the outcast, or the society that refuses to see their humanity.
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Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus may seem to be a distant text for many of our students, these verse novels can help provide insight and connection. In Sit and Simmer (a poem from The Story of My Anger), Juli describes how her anger builds, how it develops, and how she tries to control it. Like the Creature, anger is something that builds and builds.

Sit and Simmer

In The Story of My Anger, Yulieta Lopez, the main character, talks about her anger not as a sudden explosion, but as an emotion shaped by silence, pressure, and the expectation to remain controlled. In the poem “Sit and Simmer,” anger is described through vivid physical and elemental metaphors—a fire, smoke, an internal force that grows more dangerous the longer it is contained.

This understanding of anger closely connects to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, particularly to the Creature’s experience of rejection and isolation. Like Lopez’s speaker, the Creature does not begin with rage; his anger develops as he is denied voice, recognition, and belonging. Together, these texts invite readers to consider anger not as an inherent flaw, but as a response to being unseen, unheard, and misunderstood.

Read the following poem. What do you notice? What words and phrases stand out to you?
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​Sit and Simmer

My name is Yulieta Lopez
and this is the story of my anger,
and how it became
a five-alarm fire I tried
to smother silent
but it spun into an asteroid
that slammed around inside me
and begged to be let out--
I didn’t want to play the part
of the angry Black girl
so I tried to keep the fire
constrained in my belly
but it slithered out and snaked
itself around my throat--
a rope of smoke
that caused friction
in the folds of my body
and the longer I let it sit and simmer
the harder it became to just breathe. (Mendez, 2025, p. 4)

1. What emotions stand out to you when you read or hear “Sit and Simmer”?
2. How does the title itself set the tone for the poem? What does it mean to “sit” with something? To “simmer”?
3. What is happening in the poem literally — and what’s happening emotionally or symbolically?
4. Identify one or two key images that describe anger. How does Mendez visualize or embody the feeling?
5. How does her choice of verbs (for example, words like boil, simmer, stew, burn, swallow) shape how we experience anger in the poem?
6. How does Mendez use cooking language as metaphor? What does that suggest about where anger comes from or how it’s contained?
7. What does the speaker’s use of sound (repetition, rhythm, pauses) reveal about control or release?
8. How does the speaker describe anger as something that lives inside the body rather than something expressed outwardly?
9. How is this similar to the Creature’s experience with anger in Frankenstein?
   • What causes the Creature’s anger?
   • What happens when he is ignored, rejected, mistreated, or silenced?
10. At what moments in the novel does the Creature’s anger “sit and simmer,” and when does it finally erupt?

Language and the deliberate choices poets and authors use to create an image or idea for a reader are part of the focus of this next poem. The poem, The Poetry of Car Mechanics, highlights the preciseness of language and description.  Dylan’s search for order and meaning mirrors the Creature’s search for meaning and understanding. Both figures attempt to interpret the world around them and define their place within it, suggesting that language and interpretation are essential tools for constructing identity and finding purpose.

The Poetry of Car Mechanic

“The Poetry of Car Mechanics” is the opening poem in the verse novel The Poetry of Car Mechanics by Heidi E. Y. Stemple.  The poem introduces the main character Dylan and his search for order, belonging, and self-understanding through the world of car engines. “The Poetry of Car Mechanics” connects to Frankenstein, A Modern Prometheus through a shared focus on humanity’s desire to create order out of chaos using both art and science. In the poem, the speaker finds clarity inside an engine, a world of logic and repair, unlike the confusing “real world.” Similarly, Victor Frankenstein turns to science to make sense of life and death, believing knowledge can control disorder. Both texts suggest, however, that science alone is not enough. Just as car mechanics requires intuition and creativity, Dr. Frankenstein’s work relies on imagination as much as method, revealing that human creation carries emotional and moral consequences beyond control.

Read the poem below.  What specific details do you notice?  Underline the words or phrases that stand out to you.

The Poetry of Car Mechanics
 
There is a certain poetry
in car mechanics.
Part art,
part meter and math,
part discovery.
Lifting the hood reveals
a world I know--
not like the real world
with its
mixed messages
and verbal
land mines.
Missing pieces
and ones that don’t quite fit--
 
like me.
 
When I’m inside an engine,
everything makes sense.
The motor sings.
I can tune the sour notes,
fix the broken parts.
Less doctor
            than partner.
I wish the world around me--
with its broken parts,
with my broken parts--
was more like a car engine. (p. 13)

Directions: You are going to use “The Poetry of Car Mechanics” as a template for writing your own poem about one of the characters or events in the novel Frankenstein. This type of writing is called dependent authorship; it means you are using the structure, shape, line breaks, and formatting of one writer’s work to create one of your own. Writers have use this type of writing for centuries to learn the craft of writing, in homage, in parody, and to honor other artists.
 

• Choose one key character from the novel (Dr. Frankenstein, the Creature, etc.)
• Use the dependent authorship template below for your version of the poem
• Write in first person
• Your poem should include
  • at least one metaphor or extended comparison
  • sensory imagery(sound, touch, taste, sight, etc.)
  • words and phrases that reflect/show the emotional state of the character

Brainstorming:

Place the characters name in the center of a brainstorming cirlcle. Then radinating  five lines spaced evenly anser the following five questions.

1. What does your character understand deeply? What do your character understand better than other people?

2. What does he/she use to bring order and control to their world?

3. Where does your character feel safe? Where does your character feel powerful?

4. What parts of the world confuse, threaten, or reject your character?

5.  What does he/she feel comfortable or in control doing?

Use the structure, line movement, and craft of "The Poetry of Car Mechanics" as a model. Keep the poem’s skeleton (line breaks, comparisons, shifts), but replace the ideas with your own experience and subject.

The Poetry of __________________
Based on the poem The Poetry of Car Mechanics by Heidi E. Y. Stemple
 
There is a certain poetry
in ____________________.
Part ____________________,
part ____________________and ____________________,
part ____________________.
____________________ reveals
a world I know--
not like the real world
with its
 
and ____________________
____________________.
 
and ones that ____________________--
like ____________________.
When I’m inside ____________________,
everything makes sense.
The ____________________ ____________________.
I can ____________________,
____________________.
Less __________________
than __________________.
I wish the world around me--
with its _____________________,
with my ____________________--
was more like ____________________.
 
By ____________________