Poetry reflection

Poetry belongs to everyone, and has had a place in my life. When I was little, we had a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends  by Shell Silverstein that my dad would read to me sometimes. I remember my favorite three where the one about the king and his peanut butter sandwich, the guy being eaten by the boa constrictor, and the one about the girl who refused to take out the trash. 

Poetry has somewhat of an importance in my life because sometimes I write poems about the plots or scenes in stories I am writing, like the Two Voice, or Nonsense poem I did in class based on a story of a pair on twins, one born in one universe of magic, the other in a universe like ours, coming together and defeating what their parents couldn’t. It sort of helps me develop the scene better because depending on the type of poem, there aren’t as many rules or guidelines as a normal story. This has gotten me thinking that perhapsI will have random bits of poetry in my published books, sort of like Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland. 

Poetry belongs to everyone in my opinion, simply because it is the kind of thing anyone can do. Not everyone can have the idea for the plot of a book, but anyone can write a poem about something they are familiar with, like nature or social justice or school, or stress; these being topics that can’t always satisfyingly fill a book or short story. As long as you are literate, have means to write, and an idea, you can write poetry.

The life and experiences effect what a poet creates by changing what they write about. If you live in the city in the high end area and have never been any where else, you probably wouldn’t be familiar with a slum, thus you would not write about it. Instead you would write about the nice things you know of. If you are a man who is not aware of how society makes unreachable standards and ideals for woman, you would not write about that, but a woman who has experienced it would. Someone who has social anxiety, knows someone close to them who does, could write about it. 

People write about what they are familiar with and know. I know more about how a public school in America works than how a Christian school in Finland works, so I would rather obviously write about the public school in America. If I wrote from the point of view of a character I role play that is wary of making friends and being social with mortals because they always end up getting killed by monsters, I would have the connection of having a friend just sort of leave and stop talking to me, and being anxious because I don’t know why. It’s not as drastic, but I can still put myself in her shoes and have my own personal emotions help me write her’s realistically. 

Poetry has had a part in my life in it’s own way, from in my bedroom, to in the classroom. It belongs to everyone who is literate, and able to write it down. Poetry is indeed effected by what the author is around and familiar with due to the fact that you probably wouldn’t write about things that you don’t know about.