Thursday, May 8, 2014

Poetry Class

    This is my last post in regards to my Modern American Poetry class, though I do think I will continue to post for my own enjoyment. For my final post I think I will do things a little bit different. I will post about my class instead of one of the poets that I have read.
      I joined the class because I needed to fill an elective and I have always enjoyed poetry. I was looking for a class that would be easy and something I could focus little attention to. Though my I did not expect much from the class, I find that at the end of the semester, it is the class I will miss the most. There are several reasons for this change of attitude and I would like to share some of them with you.
     First, the professor made the class fun. He gains an indescribable excitement when discussing the poets and their works, which honestly made me realize that I did not like poetry as much as I thought. The professor's ability to engage the poem in a way that represents what the author's purpose is, and to do this easily, impressed me. The professor then would lead us (students) to begin to grasp a better understanding of the author's intent in writing the poem. Where I used to just read the poem and enjoy it for rhyme and rhythm, he taught me to slow, put the poem into my own words and find what emotions were held within the words of the poem. This ability to understand the poem better has made me actually enjoy poetry. I now respect the words and writers.
     Second, my fellow classmates, through discussion and their own blogs, gave me different viewpoints to read the poems in. I got to hear how others interacted with the read poems, which also helped me in better understand the poems. I can only read poems through my past experiences, through my thought process, and through my understanding; hearing someone else's personal reflection of the text is wonderful in the fact that it allows me to experience the text through emotions I would not normally be able to experience it with. To those who are in my class and may read this, I truly enjoyed being in class with you and I thank you for sharing your thoughts, they have helped me a lot. I also want to address that I said some things regarding some poems that may have left you scratching your head (my comments on Muriel Rukeyser's Mearl Blankenship probably is my best example of this). I did this at times just to get conversation going when things were a little slow, I apologize.
      Third, this class made me want to write  again. I used to write poetry all the time (looking back most were not very good), now I feel like taking pen to paper again and just letting the words flow onto the page like "something like wave after wave that breaks on the beach" (Rukeyser's Poem White Page White Page Poem). I have no intention of ever being published again (yes, I was published once), but maybe someone will come across a poem that I might post on this blog and actually enjoy it.
     These are just a few things I walk away with from this class. I have grown to actually enjoy poetry and the people who write them. So let the last words that I post in regards to this class be said to my professor and my fellow classmates, Thank You.

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