Experience Poetry

(Word Count - 700 words)

First day of summer school

Sleepy eyes don’t want to open.

I force myself out of bed.

It is a struggle I am familiar with

I just want to feel refreshed.

I slowly get ready for the day.

The long day I have a head of me

At least I wont be bored, or stuck with nothing to do.

I must keep busy.

I trudge to class

Negative thoughts raging through my head.

I don’t like poetry, I’m not creative

How do I expect to get through a poetry class when I can’t write?

I do not know what to expect

I am already exhausted with this class.

I take my seat and gaze out that window.

What a beautiful day.

Stuck inside. Forced to try and be creative. I am stuck.

The teacher introduces himself

Gabe. I like him. The first class is bearable. I take more notes than I would have normally done.

“Ars poetica” – Poem about the poetic art.

Poetry is blue

It can help you find yourself

Having trouble writing? Use a phrase

One that you can continually go back to

A reference

Leap, and the net will appear

Gabe loves rivers, colorful wildlife. Rivers were the first roads.

You become fascinated with the tings that caused your near death experience.

Aesthetic rather than ethical

There is too much to say about the world.

Two unrelated words: Yak Bullet

What is a yak? It’s sort of like a musk ox.

Don’t put anything obvious into a poem!

It’s almost better to not know the answers to the questions, “What is poetry?” and “What isn’t poetry?”

The first day of class excites me.

Maybe I will finally get interested in poetry. Will I become creative?

Will I discover I have been creative all along?

These thoughts exhaust me. I accidentally fall asleep.

Waking up startled, I may be late to work.

I rush. I’m on time.

4-9 work is hectic and full of drama. It is weird.

I get home and take a long shower.

Longer than necessary. I forget about my first assignment.

I read Whitman’s “Song of Myself” for the second time.

I still appreciate his work, although I do not understand it.

We had an assignment.

 

10 things a poet is/does (according to Whitman’s preface):

 

1. “For such the expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new.”
2.  Eternal passion
3. Indifference
4. “Forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is.” …What?
5. “The messages of great poets to each men and women are, come to us to equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than you, what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy, you may enjoy.”
6. Poems of the poet must stand through the changes of time.
7. Love/Affection
8. “The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by te justification of perfect personal condor.”
9. Faith of the flush of knowledge
10. Investigation of the depths of qualities.

 

3 questions that may or may not be unanswerable.

 

1. Qualities of a poet – does everyone have them? If so does that mean anyone with these qualities is a poet, or is it just poets who have these qualities?
2. Would you think Whitman is contradicting himself most of the time? (Yes.)
3. How could he not show some sort of sorrow for life, for things in life that are sad? Must everything be embraced without sorrow?

 

What is Whitman doing, or saying in “Song of Myself”?

He is writing about himself loving himself, hoping others will do the same once hey have read his work. He is embracing the world and everything in it.

I am done with my first homework assignment.

I think I am understanding these poems more and more

I feel as though I will enjoy this class more than anticipated.

As soon as I am finished my boyfriend arrives.

I see him and I feel less stressed.

Excitement and giddiness replace my feelings of stress and worry.

Emotions I typically feel when he is near.

My day ends and I am relaxed.