What's Been Happening Since the Last Post
The last few weeks have been spent mulling over the meaning of words, studying our poets, and explaining why our selected piece of poetry is indispensable to our poet's collective work. Once we pressed the submit button on the essay, the next project for the class was to write about something significant that happened for ten minutes in class. We had a few poetic styles to utilize like abstract poem, concrete poem, found poem, free verse, ghazal, haiku, insult poem, list poem, nonsense poem, rap, or sonnet. After submitting those very rough drafts, we had another to do. We were given 20 minutes for the one named Effacing the First Person. In three columns or three paragraphs, we take two to three facts about ourselves, then two things that may or may not be true about ourselves, lastly we select someone famous and write three facts about them. After viewing all of your pieces, we create a piece of poetry. We had a week to revise, then we had a poetry slam during class.
To Write or To Be Written About
As a quick observation, writing about, critiquing, and analyzing poetry is a longer endeavor than writing poetry. The poetry may not be great, but one can compose some of the many different styles in a short period of time. I was surprised that I was able to create a list poem that made sense in ten minutes. The beginnings of my sonnet took a little longer, since there is a strict form to conform. I enjoyed manipulating the words to fit my rhymes and figuring other ways to say things. Another difference is that our poems did not have to have any sources cited.
I feel that writing about poetry helped with this aspect of the assignment as we got to know the style of our artist and the time period in which they wrote. Another way the writings were similar is finding the correct words to use, whether concise terms or a type of elaboration. With Effacing the First Person Poem construction, we had to make sure to add the points we wrote in each section into our poem. This could be drawn as a comparison to quotes and facts that we want to include in our essays about our author.
For future teaching, I think I would like to use a similar method. I would like to do the poetry writing before and after the essay to have the students see their growth after completing the essay paper. We often get caught up in what we feel we can not do, it is important to measure when and where we can succeed.
ReplyDeleteHi Christy,
I absolutely loved your poetry slam performance! Your tone and cadence was spot on. As to the topic of to write or to be written about, I agree that writing about poetry does take a long time, and takes a lot of analysis and critique than it takes to write one. Just as you said, you were able to create a list poem that made sense in ten minutes. I think once I get accustomed to the various poetic forms, it may become easier for me to write poems. I agree that writing about poetry helps with understanding the style of the poem and how they even formulated the poem in the first place. This informs us on how other poets did it and may help us further our craft in writing poetry . We get a chance to analyze and dissect their writing process , which can inspire us to emulate their style or work.
-Viktoria Baklan