Blog Post #2

Writing about poetry and actually writing poetry were two very different experiences. Personally, I've had about four years of practice writing about poetry at college level but I've never actually written a poem. I do enjoy reading poetry and academically writing about it. I enjoy figuring out how it fits in the poet’s life and the reasons why it was written. But the thing about poetry is that it is usually a product of the poet’s personal feelings, something that comes from incredible vulnerability. For example, in my essay I argued that “O Captain! My Captain!” was a deeply personal poem for Walt Whitman as he was grieving the bond he shared with Lincoln. He was genuinely grieving the president and all the young men who had died in the extremely deadly war. But I was able to write about it from a completely detached stance because I neither knew Whitman nor experienced the things he did. This necessary vulnerability is the reason why I have never liked writing poetry, or doing any kind of creative writing. I have never felt confident in being vulnerable and that’s why I have always tried to avoid it as much as possible, unless it was for an assignment such as in this class. Ironically, this fear is also what I wrote my poem about. I think that it was definitely much less intimidating than I thought it would be. In fact, writing poetry, performing it, and getting to hear others’ poems was actually fun. This experience has definitely made it a little less intimidating to write poetry and perform it in front of others.