I enjoy writing poetry, even when it’s bad, which it often is, but I hate studying it for creative writing classes. Okay, so that’s not an entirely true statement. I like to study poetry, I just don’t like to WRITE poetry for class. There’s a reason for this. (Don’t worry, I’m not just one of those people who randomly hates doing homework.)
No, the reason I hate writing poems for classes is because I feel like I have to be genuinely inspired to write a poem that I can respect. (Even if I wouldn’t show it to anyone.) Any poetry that I have tried to write of my own free will for class–and by own free will, I mean that it isn’t an imitation of something someone else has written–turns out completely horrible. I have come to the conclusion that this is because I have to be feeling something extreme when I write poetry, be it a negative or positive emotion, and if I’m not feeling extreme, than I can’t possibly translate anything onto the page.
For some reason, fiction is a completely different story. Tell me to churn out a piece of short fiction, and I can usually do it. It may not be fantastic, but I have some degree of respect for it. Not so with poems. Also, I hate showing my poems to people, unless those people are random strangers I won’t ever see again, or hear from, or meet. Poems are just such personal things to me, and showing my poetry to someone makes it less personal. This is an issue even when I write something awful and random, because then people get the wrong idea, but I have a feeling it would be more of an issue if I was showing what my REAL poetry is like. *sigh* Can anyone say double standard?
**Oh, and a brief side note. I will be largely not posting on this journal for the better part of the month of November, because I will be participating in Nanowrimo. So unless something earth-shattering happens, expect me to be inactive. My apologies.**