Did You Take Classes?

[Terri2]

Did you ever take any poetry classes to learn how to write poetry? Or, read a how-to book or something? How did you learn to write poetry? Did you just learn what works through trial-and-error?

[LoveHatesYou]

When I started writing poetry is was actually copying my favorite writers, then in college I had formal training. I acctually am an awful poet, but its fun.

[ktmayo05]

Personally, I never really had any interest in it until highschool when I decided that it was a good idea for me to take a creative writing course.

I got into it - WAY into it - was self published in highschool and have been hooked ever since. It's just such a release for me and found it to be easy - then again, some people are good at physics. I'm just good at writing. (Self proclaimed, of course)

[YoPlait]

i never had any training or anything, i actually probably have the lamest introduction to poetry ever.. i was out of high school, it was about two in the morning and i watched 'shakespeare in love', then i proceeded to watch romeo and juliet about 3 straight times, and i just started writing what started out as truth and feelings, and evolved into massive confusion that appears everywhere i write. but hopefully now that i'm back in school they can sort that out?

[daclawson2]

I was introduced to poetry in high school (I played three sports all year and joined the poetry club, people questioned me) with little meaningful instruction, but I got caught in it's mystique. So from About 2000, until last year, I wrote uneducated, unrefined poetry, more raw emotion and meaning than structure or language. After two and half years in a degree in Architecture, I changed my major to English/ Creative Writing. I have learned so much in the year I have been in the writing environment. But I think a lot of my success comes from the the fact that I was hooked on poetry because it was such a big part of my way of communicating feelings and ideas. This makes learning it in a educational setting more fun and easier; I still hate reading though.

[msstroda]

I have been writing, both poetry and stories every since I could pick up a crayon, LOL. Then when I became an adult I decided to take creative writing classes. I love writing and hope to soon get my books published in the offline venue. As of now they are published at http://www.lulu.com/micksmix

I am also looking for an agent to represent me but as I write in a variety of genres, that has been rather difficult. Most agents want an author who does one thing and does it well. I feel that as long as the author does well, even in a variety of genres, they should get the chance to be represented.

The following poem was written when I was fifteen years old. Let me know what you think of it please.


A Love To Call My Own

I knew from the beginning,
That you were just a flirt;
Yet I fell in love with you,
Knowing I'd be hurt.
I thought I could tie you down,
And make you love just one;
But how could I do something,
No-one else had ever done.
I know you never loved me,
And I'm trying not to cry;
For I must find the strength somehow,
To kiss your lips good-bye.
When you ask for me again,
You'll find I won't be there;
I want a love to call my own,
Not one I'll have to share.
So I will hide my broken heart,
Beneath a laughing face;
And though you'll think I never cared,
No-one else can take your place.


Copyright ?1977 Mickey L. Stroda

[DuchessAngel37]

I've always hated creative writing classes in general. Especially the ones in school, where one teacher is doing the grading. I wrote some of worst poetry in my life in all my college classes. Any poetry I've ever written usually comes from some extreme emotion I'm feeling, and if I don't feel it, I end up with the most trite crap, it comes out sounding like a Paris Hilton lyric.

And I had a hard time with the short story section sometimes. Usually the assignment was something like 'pay attention to setting' or something lile that, and setting is never that important to me. I tell a lot of my stories through dialogue (I have been doing some experimenting with long descriptive passages and minimal talking though), and everything I wrote came out that way, so I the instructor and I butted heads constantly. I said the same thing over and over, "You can't force someone's creativity to go a certain way."

However, classes that were at like the library or something, those were a little better. At least there was no grades involved, and you were getting the opinions of other people who were there to enjoy it.

[daclawson2]

I can see how that would be a hard environment to be creative in, Melissa. I suppose it all deepends on which college you take your courses at. In my CW major here at Ball State, the professors are really good at letting you create your own voice. They do give us guidelines and prompts but they let us stray as much as we need to. I think ultimately the better writing environment of a certain college is, the better writing you will produce. I like having instructors because they make me read and think about what I read. That always helps make my writing better. And who says writing crap is bad, It may be crap to you but someone might like it. Even your Paris Hilton lyrics could be an interesting form, a satire of stupid and lame celebrities. I would love to read that. Honestly I would.

[Niphredil]

Honestly, Iv been to lots of one off poetry workshops and none have ever really helped, other than my first one. Which I find funny seeing as most of them have been by "published poets" and the first was by the guy who now teaches me english langauge.

Then again "published poets" can be incredibly patronising, like their workshops are more "lets get these kids into this thing called po-et-ry" rather than giving any actually useful information.

Iv applied and been accepted to do english, creative writing and practice at lancaster uni next year, so Im hoping a real course will help more .

[Authorgen]

Yes, I took several critical courses whereby I attained the abilitly to read poetry a certain way. In school I was taught to look at the poem and just ask myself this basic question; what is the poem really about? What is the speaker (not the poet) but the speaker stating in the poem? Is he or she creating social commentary like James Wright often does in his poetry? Or, is the poet doing something completely different.

After you get through asking yourself the basic question of what this poem is about, you begin to break the poem down by asking yourself a couple of other question which will help you understand the poem more and, equally as important, understand why this poem works on both a literal and figurative level. What are these things which helps unravel this Christmas gift? There are things such as tone which helps create the mood. Metaphor and Simile creates a richness quality that every poem needs. Sometimes you get hyperbole based on who the poem is directed to. You get meter and rhyme poems vs. non-metrical and free-verse poem; all these things creates a certain


I learn how to look at a poem to see what is the poet doing on the page, what techniques and devices is he or she doing that makes this poem successful and part of the literary cannon. Is he using one main metaphor of a bunch of different metaphors? Is the tone in the poem light-heard, or, better yet, is it dark and bitter? How does the language shape the poem? If the poem rhymes (and not all poems do), does it help itself with this technique, or does it make it too sing- songy. Further, there are other techniques used that helps a reader understand why this poem is good.

On writing poetry/workshops:

It all depends on the class. I believe workshops does have merit whereby you do attain good information from both your fellow students and the actual instructor, a publish poet. At the university that I attended for the last two years, I had a fabulous teacher that gave me a lot of honest and critical feedback on my work. She explained to me what worked and what didn?t work in the poem. I do not believe a poet who teaches these workshops are tying to turn the students into ?poets? or geared them towards this field. Rather, they want students to become better overall writers and they want students to understand what makes a good poem from a bad one.

Getting back to the students:

I think in these workshops the majority of the kids don?t know how to read a poem for whatever reason. I believe kids have had a bad experience in High School where teachers either taught them the wrong way to approach poetry, or, simply put, teacher in HS forced poems down the throat of kids that was boring, blunder, and, generally speaking, too difficult to unravel. Kids do not understand poetry from the enlightenment or the romantic air. Thus, they do not care. We live in a media driven society where everything happens in a split second. Kids need to have poems, or at least a survey of poems that speaks to this generation? Confessional School, Beats, New York School, and some of the metaphysical experimental poets would unravel the brains of these kids in HS.

Other reasons why I enjoy poetry workshops:

My teacher taught me a good number of traditional styles versus free-verse. We had ten poems do throughout the quarter, 3-4 rewrites, and two different journals due at the halfway work.

What were some of the styles?

Villanelle, Sestina, Couplets, Sonnet, Audabe, Ode, Quatrain, Ghazal, Anaphora/Listing/Repetition, Metaphor poem, Metrical poem, Blank Verse, and other poems as well.

[Josie]

I wrote a poem for the school magazine when I was 11 years of age, but never wrote another poem until I was retired. I wrote about 50 poems over the Christmas period about 12 years ago. Most of them were for children, but not all. I discovered 2 years ago, by accident, that children loved them and asked me to put them onto a website for them. My husband made the website 18 months' ago, and the 50 poems have been added to and now I think there are about 250 poems (and more waiting to go on for September). Thre have been over 20,000 visitors to this website so far, so I guess people like them, or find them useful. Don't ask me how to write them - I couldn't say. They tumble out of my mind quite often. Mostly I write story poems for children with a good rhyme and rhythm (because children like that), but I have also written Victorian Ballads, Petrarchan Sonnets and many other forms of poetry. I've written poems for all age groups really, and the retired people like the poems on "retirement" (as we can see from the information we get back on "what our readers are reading" and where they are from). If you'd like to see these poems, here is the website, and please tell children, parents or teachers for me:

http://www.whiteheadm.co.uk/html/poem_index.htm#menu

I don't usually write sad poems, but I think I have written poems to make people think about more serious things in life, such as: Slavery. I sometimes have shown children how you can "mirror" a poem or "shadow" one, and one of these funny poems is called Brave, Brave Sledderclob - which is a take-off of Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. I write from funny or nonsense poems, to beautifully descriptive poems of the natural world. If anyone can tell me how I write them I'd like to know, but I couldn't imagine going to a writing class because I don't think another person can tell someone how to write. You either do it or you don't.

[NSUSA]

I think a lot of people take a creative writing class, and that includes poetry. I don't know many people who took a class made just for poetry.

[Josie]

Hello Brenda -Thanks for your reply. I have just started reading Stephen Fry's book "The Ode Less Travelled". I have only read the foreward at the moment, but he does emphasise the fact that, whereas you can go to classes to learn to play an instrument and there are techniques for drawing and painting and other hobbies, there isn't much help with the writing of poetry. There are things which you can learn about yourself: the difference between rhythm and metre, what structure a sonnet has, guidelines for writing a ballad, but I have found two things which have helped me: Firstly I learnt, from an early age (ie three and a half years), to dance: ie ballet, tap etc. and I continued until I was 18, and secondly I learnt to play the piano. I think that the ability to hear a clear beat and count the beats per bar etc helps with rhythm in poetry. Secondly, I think you have to have an innate love of sound, especially that of words. Children know what I mean, for from an early age they like rhyming words. These things are fundamental to writing verse which has a good rhythm. When writing for children, you have to have a creative mind and the ability to write stories on all the subjects that children love. They tell me that witches and fairies, and monsters and dinosaurs are high on the list still. If you have these three things and put them together, you can easily write rhythmic poems for children. But it is nice to go onward and upwards with poetry to include Petrarchan sonnets, haiku and blank verse. The first of this list of three have a very strict structure and can be learnt. If I went to a writing class and was just given a subject and told to produce a poem in ten or twenty minutes' time, I couldn't do it. It would be a block to my writing, but I know that this is probably how many "creative writing groups" work. A poem comes to my mind when I am least of all thinking of one. It may come as a result of a tune that I hear, or some words on a train or a glance through my window.

There is a big difference between creatively writing prose and creatively writing poetry, and they should be separated and taught in a different way. I go into schools and meet teachers and children. Children have to learn even from their first year at school what rhyme is, and to clap their hands for rhythm. I hope that gone are the days when you just read someone else's poem and were asked: "What was Wordsworth referring to here?" or "How does Keats respond to the nightingale?" - or perhaps, after reading one of my poems: "Behind these words, could there be a hidden meaning?" - because the answer would usually be "No". If I have a message to put over, I like to put mine over clearly. These questions, in a classroom, iare what turn students off poetry for life.

It would be interesting to hear what others have to say about this. In the meantime I shall continue reading my book and also writing poetry but without someone telling me the subject and giving me 20 minutes in which to write. ha ha Josie Whitehead

[Hussein21]

No, I never took a poetry lesson, I have a thing for writing and I have always bee deemed talented in the aspect. Essays written in schools and grammar checkers has always help me to rephrase and guide my poetry too. So, after writing, I just correct them

[Owuamanam Eberechukwu]

Did you ever take any poetry classes to learn how to write poetry? Or, read a how-to book or something? How did you learn to write poetry? Did you just learn what works through trial-and-error?

Yes I did take literature classes in high school. We had a mean teacher with a sagging lips. I loved her though