Christi Wood

My Understanding of Lyric Poetry

            Before I began this class, I had very little introduction to any form of poetry. I read a little Emily Dickinson in my American Renaissance class, and we had a few poems in Minority Literature, but other than that I have not had very much exposure. So the information that we have been reading in the text about poetry and how to create it was all new.

            As I began reading I asked myself what I had gotten in to. I did not understand the lingo and had no clue what was coming off the page and going into my brain. But as the weeks have gone by and I have reread the text and applied it to my own poem, I have a greater understanding of what poetry is and the process of writing a poem.

            The text states that there are five main parts of a poem: line, image, sound, rhythm, and density. Out of all of these, image has been the most important thing that I have learned and applied to my poem. Don’t get me wrong, the others are important, but my feedback from classmates was mainly saying, “Add more imagery.” So I did. J.J. was very helpful when he analyzed my poem and gave me great feedback, but his main point was that I needed more distinct images. During my revision stage, I read through my first draft and realized that I had not put any images at all into the poem. After revising and reading again, the poem took on a whole new meaning with the images included. I actually felt like I was there and I had given the poem a place, which is what the text says you are supposed to do.

The workshops were very helpful for me, because I could see what other people were saying about the poems and use that during my revision. The first poem I wrote was all rhyme at the end of the lines. After reading the first lesson I realized that we were not supposed to use all rhymes and then we discussed this point in the first workshop. This knowledge led me to putting away the first poem and beginning on something different and more along the guidelines.

The last section of the text was very helpful, because it tells you what you need to do to write a great poem. I truthfully never thought it would be a good idea to read other poems to help me write my own, because I was always worried that I would reproduce what I had read. But the author of our text says that is one of the most important things to do so that you can see how others write and get a better understanding of poetry.

I believe that the most important part of writing poetry is the revision stage. When I first wrote my poem, I just threw some words on the page. But, when I went back and revised, I actually sat there and thought about what I really wanted to say. After reading my final poem, well for now final, I felt so much better about it than I did when I had first read it. My comments from my classmate were also encouraging because the reply about my first draft said something along the lines of “it’s good, but it needs a lot of work.” But my final draft reply was “this is great, you did a really good job at revising.” I felt so much better about my poem and myself, and about the fact that I could learn to do something like this in such a short period of time. Poetry has always been a field that I was afraid of, and I know I’m definitely not a great poet or anything, but I will definitely plan to keep reading poetry and try to learn more about writing poems and perfecting them.

Reading my fellow students’ poems also helped me to critically analyze poetry. The text says that we should do close critical readings, and I believe that this does help you to learn the fundamentals of writing poetry. I had to use the specific terms that I had never understood before when communicating with my classmates about their poem. This was a great learning tool and also made me look back and reference the text which is a great way to reinforce what has already been learned.

Now that I have been exposed to lyric poetry I will give my understanding of how I see it. I think of lyric poetry as lines of words that include images that a reader can see as they read the poem. Poetry should take the reader to the place and make them feel the surroundings and the words. The poem should have some sort of rhythm that keeps the poem flowing, but the reader should not get lost in the beat so that they lose the meaning of the poem. All of this should be included into something that gives the same meaning when read as it does when it is heard. Using these characteristics should help a poet write something that moves off the page, through the voice, into the ears of the audience, and moves them into poem.