"Bless, Press, and Address"...Entry #10

When reading through some of my peers blogs, I really felt like I could relate a lot to Alyse's entry #9 about poems. I really liked how she talked about her dislike for poems and that she has hated writing them ever since high school because of bad experiences with them. Her view on them, however, changed once she was introduced to the different ways of writing them during Jaci and Lexi's presentation on poetry last Wednesday. I too, never liked poetry and could never think of a "creative" way to write them like my teachers wanted me to. There were always too many rules to follow and I always feared that mine would turn out all wrong and not be what the teacher was asking for. What I wanted to say would never fit into the lines or space that the rules for the poem asked for. I hated it. For this reason, I want to bless Alyse's entry #9.

Once I reached college, I started to see poems  that were written freely and to me weren't really poems at all. I grew up thinking that poems had to rhyme or have a certain number of syllables in each line, so when I read poems that didn't follow the rules I was taught I brushed them off. I didn't think poems could be written like that and if they were I didn't think of them as poetry. My teachers in elementary school had brainwashed me! They taught me about poems that had all these rules and if there was a syllable missed or if lines two and four didn't rhyme, then points were marked off. They didn't seem to care so much about the meaning or the message behind the poem, we just HAD to follow the rules! If we only knew that we could write poems freely and address what we wanted to say, then maybe I, along with many others, would have enjoyed poetry. "When students know how to write poems and use poetic devices, they can create vivid word pictures, powerful images, an touching emotional expressions" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 156). Maybe I could have created some really amazing poems if there wasn't so many rules to follow.

After Jaci and Lexi's presentation last Wednesday, I looked at poetry in a whole new light. I now understand that poetry doesn't need to consist of all these rules that we learned about. It can be about whatever you want and written however you want to get the message out to people. That's where the creativity comes from. As Tompkins states, "Poets choose words carefully and structure lines and stanzas in creative ways" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 156). I wish teachers would teach this to students early on so they can learn to enjoy poetry and writing it unlike myself and many others I know. It has been proven that when given a choice and freedom on what to write about, students produce better pieces. I just wish we were given that choice growing up.


Tompkins, G. E. (2012). Teaching writing: balancing process and product. Boston, MA: Pearson
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