Writing About Poetry V. Writing Poetry

I would consider writing about poetry to be analytical and somewhat sterile. I don’t really enjoy being the one analyzing a poem and dissecting it thoroughly because sometimes when you dissect it and pick apart its rhetoric and figurative language it tends to lose its magic. I think it’s easier to write about poetry than to write poetry. Writing about poetry is just recognizing the form, structure, and figurative language used and then analyzing it. Whereas writing poetry is more of a balance between making sure the structure, form, and figurative language are all there and have a universal theme that will translate to your audience. Essentially, I think that creating is more difficult than criticizing. I enjoy writing more than anything else but sometimes I find it challenging to write poetry because I compare my writing to those of established writers and poets and then the task becomes quite daunting. I think its easy to get caught up in the technicality of poetic form and then overthink every detail until you don’t know what to do anymore. However, I enjoyed the process of writing these poems because the quick write and the “wrecking the first person” helped create some rules and structure to the process but they weren’t rules that made feel overwhelmed. Both exercises were useful techniques in getting some thoughts out, it was stimulating and it gave me something specific to write about while still having creative freedom. In the future as a teacher I would like to implement something similar to the quick write and “wrecking the first person” to help my students get an idea of what to do but also allow them enough freedom to create something that still feels organic. As a future teacher, I hope to create a safe environment for my students so that they can be comfortable enough to share their poems also.