Writing About vs Writing Poetry

 

(I hope this image being stretched out like that doesn't jumpscare anyone, sorry!)

    Hi everyone! Today my blog post will be focusing on the subject matter of writing poetry, versus writing about poetry. I have been writing poetry, since I was the age of eight, which began as me trying to rediscover lyricism within music, matching the syllabics to the beats of rhythm. I wanted to imagine that one day, I would be able to produce music like my favorite musicians at the time. While it mostly never came into fruition, I became so enamored with language and poetry, and as a result, I can definitely say that I am qualified to discuss the differences between writing about poetry, and writing poetry.

Writing Poetry is a process that takes place in the internal section of the mind. It draws from no source (aside from topics like ekphrastic, ego, and natural poetry). When I write poetry, the subject of the matter is always the why, but not exactly in the same way the why is studied in writing about poetry. It is using techniques, listening to how the words phonetically sound in your head, and rhythmically placing it on the page, in a way that it's irreplicable. Poetry is writing about the human experience, and there's infinite topics.

Writing about Poetry is a process that takes place externally, and it's just one level away from studying the poet themselves. To write about poetry, one must engage with the speaker on a level that not only requires active listening skills, but skills in understanding underlying details in the subliminal. Simile, metaphor, anaphora, epistrophe, personification, chiasmus, enjambment, form, juxtaposition, alliteration, consonance, and imagery are all examples of things that could be explored in an explication. Putting this out on the page is entirely different from writing poetry, because how you feel doesn't matter. How you feel about the poem, on the other hand, needs to be backed up by not just your interpretation, but the subtext. Not everything is laid out for the reader in poetry, and that's what makes poetry a puzzle. Without wonder, a poem would not be a poem.

How does writing about poetry inform your poetry? 
Well, to answer this question simply, it doesn't-- but, it only doesn't inform your poetry if you're not already experienced in workshops, with the understanding of how interpretation is solely focused on your lens. I wrote a poem about bees recently, and in the broadity of the messaging, people took the context of the poem literally, while others investigated many other things. One person brought up the United States, while another brought up smoking weed, while another brought up how many times they were stung by bees. For a writer, the most interpretations come from not only yourself, but from the others around you, and their voices, which shows you, the poet, exactly what your techniques are communicating to your readers.

In understanding how to explicate a poem, one will learn how to properly cite and identify techniques in a way that is more intimate with the speakers of poets. In studying a poet, you can learn more about the poets craft, in some cases, moreso than the actual poet themselves. The way that they use spacing, or language, evidences so much about the inner workings of their minds, which fascinates me. Poetry is a form of therapy for those that don't like to lay everything out on the table, especially speaking to my experience with poetics.

Anyways, here is a link for some of my favorite poetic terms.

Discussion Questions:
What does studying poetry as a topic reveal to you? Do you feel that you can ever learn too much academia, to the point that writing poetry will just become too difficult, trying to plug-in as many components as you can? Let me know your thoughts. Or whatever.