In college, I took a class on writing poetry\u2014I needed another creative writing course to graduate, and this was the only one I didn\u2019t have credit for already that was offered that semester\u2014and it only served as confirmation about something I already knew. Poetry and I don\u2019t get along. The final for that class was to describe who we were as a poet, and I believe I summed it up best by saying: \u201cI am a reluctant poet.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that I believe poetry is a lesser art form, it\u2019s just that it doesn\u2019t click with me. I like things straightforward most of the time. If I read a poem about a dandelion, to me it will be about a dandelion\u2014not the intangibility of life.<\/p>\n
I spent an entire semester writing poetry and having far more meaning read into it than I\u2019d intended to put there. My usual response to \u201cWhat were you feeling when you wrote this poem?\u201d was \u201cThat it was due in less than an hour and I still hadn\u2019t started it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I was younger I wrote poetry all the time, but it was the poetry of a teenager\u2014overly emotional angst driven crap. And like a teenager, I was absolutely convinced that it was spectacular. In fact, I would have belligerently argued with anyone who dared to suggest otherwise. I personified poetry in motion. That is to say, I wrote a poem down the leg of one of my pants and walked about. I really felt like my English teacher should have given me extra credit for that\u2026 maybe if the poem had been decent he would have.<\/p>\n
But it was my poetry, and it was angsty crap.<\/p>\n
At least there isn\u2019t a national poetry writing month\u2026 because I know somehow I\u2019d get guilted into participating\u2026 and then I\u2019d have to write poetry about how much my poetry sucks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In college, I took a class on writing poetry\u2014I needed another creative writing course to graduate, and this was the only one I didn\u2019t have credit for already that was offered that semester\u2014and it only served as confirmation about something I already knew. Poetry and I don\u2019t get along. The final for that class was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[58,856],"class_list":["post-3307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-angst","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}