In college, I took a class on writing poetry—I needed another creative writing course to graduate, and this was the only one I didn’t have credit for already that was offered that semester—and it only served as confirmation about something I already knew. Poetry and I don’t 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: “I am a reluctant poet.”
It’s not that I believe poetry is a lesser art form, it’s just that it doesn’t 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—not the intangibility of life.
I spent an entire semester writing poetry and having far more meaning read into it than I’d intended to put there. My usual response to “What were you feeling when you wrote this poem?” was “That it was due in less than an hour and I still hadn’t started it.” (more…)