Experience with Poetry

In both my middle school and my elementary school before that, I have experienced poetry units in varying depths and for varying lengths of time. My earliest memory of a significant unit is from the 5th grade, where we were required to learn about and then write different kinds of poems, choose a couple, and then present them in at a recital in the evening. Because I was still relatively young, I had not had many moving experiences to reflect in my writing, and so many of mine, including a few limericks and my take on a sonnet, where solely based on humor and forced rhyming. However, there were one or two that I felt quite proud of, due to the work that I had put into them and my liking of the way that the sounded. I remember presenting my poems, particularly because I, at that young age, still felt the effects of stage fright.

At NOVA, my middle school, the poetry unit in my 8th grade year was a great deal longer, encompassing many weeks. Much time in class was spent on analyzing, researching, and discovering poetry. I associate a multitude of fun experiences with that unit, including going outside to read poetry in the sun, and reading two-voice poems aloud with each other. At the end of the unit, we each had compiled hand-made poetry books, which contained several poems of our own composition, several of our favourite poems from other authors, and a analytic paragraph on our feelings on one of the latter kind. The one that I chose was the poem "Caged Bird", by Maya Angelou, which both flowed and rhymed nicely and smoothly and had a a deeper meaning that made me think. Additionally, by 8th grade, NOVA had helped me to lose the stage fright that had once affected me, making presenting the poetry much more fun than in my earlier years.

In my opinion, poetry can be quite fun to write, but mainly only so when I am free to write in any style and manner that I wish, allowing me to express my true feelings into the writing. I most definitely don't find forced poetry, whether by my writing or another's, inspirational at all. Poetry's value to me is its sound, its flow, and what it can make the reader feel.