What I Learned From This Class

I don’t consider myself a poet because I think in terms of prose (I’m a fiction writer outside of this class), but I am getting more comfortable with poetry. At the beginning of the semester, I felt like such an imposter to be in a class with so many talented students. Everyone seemed to take poetry so seriously and put so much work into it, and their poems turned out so impressively. I couldn’t even read a poem without feeling like the line breaks and rhymes were making me dizzy. Now, I am more confident in reading poetry and find writing poetry to be more and more enjoyable.

I am still working on finding an effective process for writing poems. In my past amateur experiences with poetry, I had the most success when I saved writing for when I was most emotional. They weren’t necessarily the most profound poems, but they were easier to get out and then I had something to work with. Unfortunately, I’m not generally a very emotional person so I don’t often feel driven to write poems. Half the time I am uninspired and it takes me forever to write anything, even in fiction. It is definitely a big challenge, and I think the process may be different depending on the poem. I am certainly still learning and it is thanks to this class and the people in it that I haven’t sworn poetry off, which I am really quite grateful for.

~Nicole Bartow