Blog #2
When writing about poetry, I became especially intrigued by the research I conducted on the poet I selected, William Butler Yeats. Although I had read his work before, I had never known much about his personal life, and I found both his love life and his role in the Modernist era fascinating. For example, I learned that Yeats wrote more than twenty-four poems for his muse and unrequited lover, Maud Gonne. In these works, he often used vivid imagery, symbolism, anaphora, alliteration, and personification to express his devotion to her. I particularly enjoyed studying his poem “When You Are Old” and analyzing its structure along with the literary devices he employed. As a result, writing about a poem is
similar to creating one because both require an understanding of the rules and techniques of poetry.
On the other hand, writing a poem and writing about a poem are different because the latter requires interpreting the work of others and considering their intentions. In contrast, writing a poem allows you to draw from your own feelings, emotions, and experiences to create something meaningful. Therefore, one allows you to create while the other one pushes you to reflect.
After writing about a poem and creating a poem, I realized that I enjoyed writing a poem more because it felt more fulfilling. Sometimes I don’t want to break down or analyze every word; I just want to take in the poem as it is and enjoy the emotions and experience it creates. However, writing about poetry informed my own poetry because it encouraged me to use vivid imagery and explore free verse. It also gave me an idea about what I could talk about and how I could say it. For this reason, I especially enjoyed writing the “Wrecking the First Person Draft” because it gave me a prompt and structure to follow.
Ultimately, this experience taught me that researching about a poet and explicating their poem is effective in deepening my understanding of the poet’s intentions and the literary techniques they use. It also made me further appreciate poetry as a reader and a writer. I could use this in my future teaching by assigning my students similar projects that combine research with analysis, allowing them to connect the poet’s life and historical context to the meaning of the poem. This will help them gain a better understanding of poetry and hopefully encourage them to write their own poems.
– Melissa Catalan
Hello Melissa! I loved how you talked about understanding poetry techniques and author intention with both writing poetry and writing about poetry. I agree that with writing about poetry it can be harder yet fascinating as you need to understand the poet's intentions and their life to interpret their poem while when writing a poem you understand your own experiences. I'm glad that writing a poem was fulfilling and more freeing than analyzing a poem even with Yeat's fascinating love life. I'm glad this experience helped you relate more to poets and apreciate their work more after going through the creative process yourself. I admire how you took your experience with researching Yeats and took it as inspiration when writing your poem and understanding what poetic devices you can use with a better understanding of them. Writing poetry and writing about poetry is definitely two separate experiences as one is for yourself and the other is about someone else, the creating vs reflecting that you talked about.
ReplyDeleteHi Melissa, I enjoyed reading your comparison of writing poetry versus writing about poetry. I had to mention that I completely agree with your opinion about the “Wrecking the First Person” activity being the most enjoyable out of the two writing activities. Like you, I feel better when there are clear instructions or rules to follow because it makes the assignment feel much easier for me. I also thought the idea of writing poetry from someone else’s point of view was much less intimidating, personally, and it was fun finding out facts about them to sprinkle in the poem. I like what you said about writing your own poetry feeling much more fulfilling than writing about someone else’s because I think that I would agree it was a good feeling to be able to share something that you created. I think that you’re definitely right about these assignments being effective ways to teach not just about poetry, but how to write it as well, because it was enjoyable to accomplish.
ReplyDelete-Clarisa Rodriguez