xenscribes

In this last post, you will reflect on writing poetry after spending an entire semester exploring different forms and types of poems as well as reading multiple contemporary poems.

After spending an entire semester focused on poetry I am really satisfied. With most classes on the graduate level in the concentration of English sometimes I find myself reading some texts for the second or third time and just having a dialogue about it - which is great because you can always find something new. However, I really enjoyed the class because I learned a lot of new things about poetry. I got to read some pieces from poets that I never have read before and I also got introduced to concepts and types of poetry that I know I would not have outside of class.

I did go ahead and sign into my submittable account. I did submit some poetry in May 2022 to The New Yorker through there. While it did not get picked up I used it as a learning experience. I hope to submit to Cygnet for school and then once I get even stronger submit to some other journals and places again.

In this blog post, I will detail my process of writing a formal 21st-century sonnet and also reducing that sonnet into a haiku or transforming it rather.

I found the writing of the sonnet to be quite exciting. I knew exactly what I wanted to write about when I saw it said 21st-century sonnet because I wanted to write about a 21st-century issue that we have with technology. Once I knew what I wanted to write about it was easy to jot my thoughts down, but the challenge for me came with the syllable count. I really had to focus on word play and making sure that I cut out all excess words in order to make the syllable count. Even though the assignment was challenging I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Before writing the list poem I revisited pages 199-201 quite a lot to reread the poetry examples. I found the list poems to be so interesting and fun! I enjoyed how the titles functioned for most of the examples I read as a gateway or description for the poem.

So for my prewriting this time I really focused on enjoying the examples and rereading the workshop 3 requirements.

For the drafting I went through a few ideas of what I wanted to write about first. The initial idea I had was to write about my career in education, but then that idea changed into me wanting to write about one of the jobs I enjoy the most, being a mom. I started my thinking about the characteristics and then added details about the joys and qualities.

The writing of the persona poem is interesting and fun because once you figure out who your subject will be, you then need to explore how you will include that person. You can either include the person through hints, through the title or at the very end of the poem. The persona poem serves as a way for you to create a little adventure for your reader and have fun doing it.

There is so much importance in music and rhythm within poetry. Many functions of poetry lend to its ability to be musically and rhythmically pleasing. When a poem has various types of rhyming patterns such as, slant rhyme, end rhyme, and true rhyme it gives the poet a chance to convey or emphasize different ideas and stress different important points with to the reader. For example, a poet might utilize end rhyme or true rhyme to ensure that a poem keeps a certain "ring" or maybe take on a certain tone.

The rhythm of the poem also relates closely to the poem's form. When writing the poems for class and reading our peers poems' aloud to complete the form I realized how much stanzas and line breaks work to give poems a different sound and rhythm.

Imagery is very important in the context of poetry because it is the "building block of all successful writing" (Huey & Kaneko 69). The reality is that when writing poetry I feel that the poet often has an image of something(s) in their head. The words that the poet uses is the way that they translate that vision onto the paper.

I thoroughly enjoyed my word substitution poem assignment. I know that actually retyping the poem was very beneficial for me because it served as another way for me to better understand its form.

Through the process of rewriting and creating my own poem with the same format I got a chance to write a poem that I otherwise would not have. The form was challenging because despite the length I also wanted to convey a strong meaning with few words, just as the original poets did.

When I ponder on the statement, "[We] learn to make art by copying what previous artists have done. We learn to write poems by reading successful poems and imitating them" (Poetry, 22), it makes me think about how things such as art come around in cycles.

I think that what it means to be a poet is to want to use language to communicate feelings and thoughts in a creative way. In the text "Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology" it is clear that writing poems are not the most "straightforward" way of communication, which also speaks to poetry as what I would say is a form of art and free expression. When I think about the various types of poems from epic to haiku to free verse and even shape poetry it makes me think that the talent it takes to be a poet varies.

While there may be a misconception that poetry is just difficult and old or aging out I find poetry to be very interesting and I love to write poetry. However, I think that a poem is something can be plain and simple in language, but also very complex and challenging.

Greetings, I am a classmate in Advanced Poetry Writing. My blog name is XenScribes. I love to read and write poetry, so I am very excited about the class this semester. I do love the "classic" poets, such as Eliot, Baldwin, Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, and Hughes. But I also have read works from more current poets, such as Jasmine Mans and Rupi Kaur.