Hi everyone!! I hope everyone had a super relaxing week leading up to you unfortunately reading my blogpost! Regarding my experience writing about poetry and the effects it has had on my own poetry, I happen to have a surprising amount of thoughts.
So to preface, I initially hated poetry, but after having read a lot more poetry as I'd gotten older I started to appreciate it a bit more. I didn't think modern poetry had much technique to it as it didn't follow traditional poetry forms, but having written poetry recently I think I've changed my opinion on that?
When writing my poem I had assumed it would be a walk in the park given that there is no real form to follow, just writing whatever came to mind and arranging it in aesthetically pleasing way. Performing my poem however, I realized that a big component in modern poetry is the performative aspect of it? Much as reading the script of a play does it no justice, I feel that reading poetry modern poetry does it very little justice. In relation to that, I feel that it's really changed the thoughts that I've maintained and written about in my work regarding poetry. I mainly focused on the usual poetic techniques but did not consider the physical presence of a poem, and I think that will remain something I address in any further criticism of poetry
If we treat poems as a living creations, why do we not consider their ability to live through a speaker?
In terms of how this could be used in future teaching, I definitely think that the act of creating a poem and performing it is super integral to one's understanding of a poem! As grueling as it was to stand in front of people - all of whom wrote bafflingly good poems - and perform it, I think it truly does create a new appreciation for poetry as more than an antiquated way to show off one's grasp of the language.
I think I'd like it to be integrated as a unit. It doesn't have to be a very long unit, it can just be a few days long, as long as it involves creating a poem and subsequently performing it. The poem doesn't have to be in any specific form or on any specific format, so long as anything one could consider is a poem was created. Likewise, the performance itself doesn't have to be some big thing - I think the performance is simply to create the understanding that poetry can find immense meaning in performance.
I think the unit would just focus on clearing up a lot of apprehension regarding poetry. Most English students have a fear of poetry since it's often the black sheep of English classes, but it doesn't really need to be that scary. With a proper understanding of it I think most people will realize it's actually very fun.
