Constructive Essay Writing Class

When I first arrived to this class, I was excited yet apprehensive about contorting my creative writing to fit poetic devices instead of writing in prose. The last time I had been in a poetry writing class was in middle school, and I was worried that this semester I would sound like an angsty teen spewing words every which way and cramming them with forced rhymes to fit the prompts. I was also wary of sharing my failed poetry with a classroom of my peers, but after being around their positive energy from the creative prose portion of this class, I felt better about opening up my work to them and I have found the amount of positive response and constructive criticism overwhelming and amazing. With the positive environment in the class, I felt that I was ready to approach poetry without too much judgement on my part. …show more content…
I had always thought that poems needed to rhyme or that poems are like prose but with a certain kind of rhythm. But doesn’t prose have rhythm, too? Can you tell a story through poetry as you would with prose? From this class, I have learned that the answers are both yes and no. To me, poetry is a bundle of contradictions. It has to tell a story, but it can leave the audience so lost that they overthink things and become scared about the infinite realities of the universe… or create a story that has a theme everyone can relate to, like love. Poetry must adhere to a rhyme scheme and it must fit in a box with a certain number of syllables and a certain amount of lines or else it’s not considered correct. Or say “screw that” and break free from those constraints. From the collection of readings we have done in class, perhaps there are more “beneficial guidelines” than actual rules in order to guide the poet to the voices, feelings and images they want to