Day 15: Poetry

I’m not as big on poetry as I am on novels and plays, probably due to my preference for longer fiction. I find that I am not always in the mood for poetry, but when I am I tend to search for poems of one specific theme rather than favouring selected poets. Though an individual poet may be counted on to maintain a fairly steady quality of writing, the content can vary wildly; in this respect, a collection of poems may be ideal for analysis but isn’t as suitable for general interest.

Having said that, I did actually read a small book of Emily Dickinson's poetry today. I skimmed through most poems, but a dozen or so caught my interest and I ended up analysing them. Though I have only rudimentary knowledge of language techniques used in poetry, I am making an effort to learn more. Hopefully I’ll be posting some short essays on poetry to this blog in a few weeks. It's certainly easier to "say a lot about a little", as my English teacher always tells us to do, with a poem than a novel as there are more language techniques used in a smaller space. I'm looking forward to comparing 'Hamlet' with some of the poetry we'll be reading later this year.

I have written a little bit of poetry; I was inspired by a friend of mine who writes incredible poetry. Mine is pretty terrible, with the exception of my first poem, which was about the weather. (I am really good at writing about the weather.) I will admit that I just now went back and read my poetry, and there is one poem whose meaning I couldn't ever hope to figure out. One of my poems (there are four) is about names; while most of it is terrible, I quite like my last stanza:

Whatever your name may be,

It means nothing to me;

It’s simply a mould

You can fill it, I’m told.

I tend to write in couplets, so my poetry sometimes lends itself towards having a much more cheerful rhythm than I intended – mind you, I found the same thing with Dickinson’s work. I certainly need some more practice at both analysing and writing poetry. To increase my ability in the former, I plan on analysing some 19^th century poetry about faeries, which fascinate me. The latter will have to wait for a burst of writing inspiration, because my creativity is still somewhat lacking, having been exhausted by August’s 50,000 words.