Blog Post 3- Poetry Packet 2

So this week I have looked over our second poetry packet and realized that a lot of the poems are close to very difficult mental puzzles. I have read a few poems multiple times and it has taken a great deal of effort to derive any meaning from them. On that stands out to me is Susan Howe's poem that is all jumbled up among the page. After examining with my peers in class we believe that it has something to do with the the French and Indian war. Susan Howe was a poet whom tended to write a lot about American History.

After being puzzled by Susan's poem for sometime and researching various words and phrases used in her poem I realized that I have spent nearly 20 minutes reading the same poem. I have been learning small facts about the names of old Native American cities and the tribes that resided in them. It seems if Susan was attempting to force me into educating myself by using her poetry to inspire a search for answers, she had surely won. Then I inferred that there are so many poets throughout the world, that to get noticed you have to make your poems memorable. Susan Howe's poems have surely left an impression on me.

Langston Hughes also interested me greatly. His poems seemed very simple, but the way he used his southern dialect throughout the poems seemed to give it a rhythm. Writing poetry in a dialect that doesn't seem normal to someone else has always made writing pop off the page to me. I personally struggle with dialect because it is hard for me to write with dialect without offending someone. Sometimes I take the dialect a little to the extreme and it comes off unintentionally stereotypical.

Finally, in terms of my own writing I realized that I had trouble writing our assigned poems. It is easy for me to write out multiple poems without thinking about it, but that wasn't our assignment. Having to use 20 words in a single poem and tie them together with one main idea is not easy task. When I write out a whole poem and see my work I realize that I don't like what I wrote. I was stripped of my free creative writing and had to adapt to being creative in a flexible manor and be able to shape the 20 words into a verbal sculpture. I am still working on my "sculpting" abilities but with time I am sure I will do well.

In conclusion the more we delve into poetry the more I realize how much I am perplexed by it. Poetry is surely one of the most intriguing forms of literature to me. However, it is not the easiest thing to write, and above all it is not easy to write a poem that is memorable to some. Just like everyone has their own taste in music, we all favor different types of poetry, just as one band doesn't appeal to everyone, no one poet will appeal to everyone.