For me, the difference between writing poetry and writing about poetry is that when writing your own poetry, you are constantly aware of what you are writing and I think more crucial. Since poetry is more of an art of words and writing about poetry is more of an essay format, you are going to be much more critical of what you are writing for poetry.
Similarities between the two would be the forehand knowledge of poetic terms and techniques. You must know them to analyze poetry and to write poetry. I felt that writing about poetry first dramatically helped set a stage for what I would later attempt to write. By reading good poetry first and having to analyze and pick it apart I got to really see how poetry could impact and how each technique, when used specifically and purposefully, had its place. From this poetry experience, I have learned new techniques to get students thinking about and writing his or her own poetry. The found poem and wrecking poem were brand new to me and really good tools to allow me to gradually move into writing my own poetry. Instead of just telling us to write a sonnet or freewrite, we had specific rules to follow which I think helped the poetry newcomers dramatically.
In the future, when teaching poetry to high school students, I am going to first going to show the students some famous poems to have them analyze. After they have grown familiar with the artform, I will then have them write and I will try to structure their writing as to not box them in but also not leave them with too much to go on since that can be intimidating.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I think it is a good point to make about being more “protective” of poetry. That is not to say that both analytical writing and poetry are creative, but somehow poetry seems MORE creative. If anything, it is a greater reflection of a person’s emotion. Obviously, hearing people read their own poem is not always the equivalent of watching them cry. Poems do not always need to have deep emotional ties, but I think students make it seems this way. For that reason, I would expect high school students to be reluctant about sharing their poetry in the same way that we did in class. However, the sharing of poetry is defiantly made easier when students are all given a common prompt for the poetry (like the wrecking the first person). This way, instead of every poem being about how miserable they are as high school students, they will be forced to somewhat separate themselves from the poetry. Prompts like this also help students start writing sooner instead of staring at a blank page and later trying to call it poetry.
Post a Comment