Poetry

The thing about poetry is...especially when you're young and trying it out for the first time...its actually somewhat subjective.

Oh, I know that there are poet friends that would beg to differ with me...but from this amateur, its the honest truth.

Well, one of the assignment options for the T.S. Eliot reading in my class was to write a poem. Pass or fail, based essentially on whether or not there's blood on the page, so to speak.

As might be expected, many opted for this option, and that's fine. I have been reading their art...and its made me smile more than once...and its been interesting to gain (perhaps) a little more insight into their lives...

But I have to wonder, as it really is why I allowed them to experiment in poetry; did they actually reflect on these experiences with the eye of an artist, or are they just getting an easy "a"? It might be easy to imitate art--certainly if you're not really expected to be good at it...but I wonder how many of them took the opportunity to let their souls grow a bit more by addressing something with their emotions, and not just their reason. I won't lose much sleep over it, of course (I get little enough of that as it is)...but I do hope that they might have touched something beautiful in the process of producing something intended to be artful.

Getting them to grasp the vibrant possibilities that exist when beauty is present is difficult--I try to get around that by taking them out of their comfort zone...into the outdoors...today we had class in a playground, and I was in an olive tree...that was fun. If it wouldn't be too distracting, I'd have music playing the whole class period, and hope that perhaps in the right moment, the right notes and the right words would connect and send their souls into the clouds, if only for a moment...maybe for Lord of the Rings...