Poems

Reading poems helped me to express myself in an interesting way. Not everyone has to understand it at the beginning but after reading it many times you get closer to the meaning. I think everyone once in a while should seat and write something to developed your created side.

Deceiving Looks

                                                                  We all have them

Trying to keep them hidden 

Almost as tucking our own hem

Life is a given 

It must be treated as a gem

Looks come from where we are driven

Like a flower to a stem

Mistakes from our past MUST be forgiven

Don't you wish it could all be a rem

So much heartbreak that's misgiven

Trying to figure out what happen to the chem-

Wishing someone would just listen

My feelings soon will drive me to prison

Just to get away from the life I'm livin

- Chaela Parkes

"Today's Special"

The poem about 'today's special," without thinking or reading further ; one would probably think it's about food while one would think it's about something totally different. It goes on to say:
Today's special is all-natural rage,
grilled on a smoldering fire.
It's powerful flavor made subtle with age,
Today's special is all-natural rage. etc.

Smoldering means: when something is burning slowing with smoke but no flame.

To be honest I have ideas what it might mean but I cannot say that I'm sure that I fully understand it.
Once again I'll say poems I have been exposed to recently are harder to analyze correctly than I would have ever imagined.
This poem is on pg. 25 in the book "The best American Poetry," if anyone wants to help me pull it apart and better understand what it is trying to say.... It's not that I do not have any idea as to what it might be saying. I'm just rather uncertain....

How Poems Arrive

In the poem “How Poems Arrive” one very suggested theme was blind. He wasn't only talking about poems in general but he also listed some aspects of life. One of the examples he gave early on in the poem is how love is blind. And also with how most of the creations of poems happen on accident. She also describes how the majority of poems can be stuck up.

Poetry Questions

After reading Gioia I didn't really comprehend what it takes to write the best poem. I never knew really knew what poems mainly consists of until I've done a few lessons in poems in high school and some recently in this class. I never liked reading poetry at all due to the fact that comprehending it can go completely different ways. Making poetry seems fun since you're able to go anywhere when writing it. My favorite poem was Grief Runs Untamed and the one I struggled with the most is How Poems Arrive. Reading poetry teaches us basic comprehension skills, writing skills, and speaking skills. Reading a book of poetry was quite annoying at first but over time you can get used to it.

"Best Poetry"

Answering a question that Prof. Talbird brought up in his most recent post, "These are, according to Gioia and Lehman the "best" poems of 2018. Can you generalize about what it takes to write a "best" poem?". I'm not going to answer this question the way it was proposed, however I would like to explain my thoughts on why Gioia and Lehman picked the poems included in their anthology. I have a couple possible reasons as to why these consider the best poems of 2018. I think the major reason that they consider these poems the best of "2018" is that they challenge the reader. If poetry was easy to understand then it would not really be a popular literary genre to write in. Good poetry challenges the reader, as I mentioned in an earlier post, reading poetry is like trying to get in the mind of the writer, but only being able to see their face. Some poems you might not ever get the true point of. If you want a better explanation of why I think this, just think back to class, when we analyzed poems and, as Prof. Talbird stated in class, came to a consensus about what the poems meant. We came to a consensus because we could not figure out what the writer truly meant, which is why I think that Gioia, and Lehman picked these poems to include in their anthology, because these poems us force to think analytically. The second reason I believe that Gioia and Lehman picked these poems is because the writer's of these poems wrote them in such a way that truly brought light to the concept that poetry is a reflection of the writer. The consensus's we came to in class where about what the writer has intended on us reading. Sure some poems can be analyzed and the meaning pulled right out, but where is the fun in that? These poems demonstrate that the writer encapsulated the idea of hiding themselves behind words while also making their poems interesting to read and analyze. These are my reasons as to why Gioia and Lehman included poems in their anthology.

My experience writing my poem...

Let me just start out by saying writing poetry is a bit harder than I first thought it would be. When we had to write our own poems in class with the ABA, BCB, CDC rhyming scheme, I must say it was quite a challenge. However I started writing my own poem at home for my collection, and let me share my thoughts on it. I wrote a post earlier about poetry being a reflection of the writer, and I must say it does hold true. I will add to this view though, when I say that poetry is a reflection of the writer, most people might assume that the reflection is going to be in the time of the writer writing the poem. Let me clarify that, lets say person A writes a poem, person B reads it. Now, person B might come to some conclusions about what the reflection of person A is, however it does not mean it was a reflection of person A at the time that person A wrote the poem, perhaps it is a reflection of person A's core beliefs, and the persons dislikes and likes in life. For example my poem is about space travel, now one might come to the conclusion that space travel is great, and that I support the idea of space travel, however if you take a step back from dissecting the poem and look at the poem as a whole you might come to the conclusion that although I like the idea of space travel, I also like the realms of science and mathematics. So when you read a poem, perhaps take a step back and think about what the writer likes and dislikes. Anyways my second major point concerning poetry is that you as a writer will find yourself continuously going back and changing your lines, and how you structure and phrase your poem. I certainly did, and I am still looking back thinking about how to make my poem sound better. So my second takeaway is don't be discouraged because at first your poem does not sound "good enough", you'll just have to keep going back and fixing stuff up, every great writer in the world had to, and I am no "great writer" in history, so just imagine how many times I'm going to have to go back and edit lines and stanzas... Just some things to think about when reading, and writing poems.