Writing Poetry

People always ask me how I can write so many poems, poems for fun in fact. To be honest, I don’t think that is a very complicated question. I write poetry because I feel. I feel happy, I feel sad; I feel the full throttle of every emotion this life has to offer. Of course, I am still very young in comparison to the majority of the world, but I have squeezed the most out of my experiences thus far.

Since I’ve been in college for the past two years, I haven’t had as much time to create anything new, as any person in college can understand, time is very limited between school work, homework, work and any attempt at a social life. But, over winter break two years ago, my life gained some more experiences that I can sadly say, many people in our country (and the world) much younger than I, have already experienced. It was a result of my feelings and reactions to these experiences that led me back to writing poetry.

You see, I can write poetry because poetry is not some complicated, mysterious piece of work that needs to be dissected and analyzed at every line. Poetry is much more than how several teachers, authors, poets and people believe it to be. I don’t really find any comfort in reading about how there is a “right” and “wrong” way to write poetry, or how we “need” to embrace a new way of writing poetry because the old way is “too cliché”.  (This to me resembles how the news always comes up with ludicrous ground breaking discoveries every month- ranging from the deathly effects of blueberries to the benefits of losing calories by staring at a blank wall.)

I suppose this is probably why I dislike chemistry so much. Why do people feel the need to unravel every marvel that occurs in our world? Can’t I just enjoy lying in a grass field without pulling apart every strand? I think this is so with poetry. It’s just a way of expressing the feelings someone has at that moment. For me at least, I can never sit down and force myself to write a poem- or anything for that matter; and if I do, it usually ends up poorly written or superficial. Poetry just flows through you, like your feelings and emotions. And sure, there are a billion techniques for writing poetry, figurative tricks, and measures and beats and rhymes and- who has the right to say what style is better than another?

That’s like trying to compare the beauty of a flower to another (which are all beautifully made by God).

For myself, my poems are records of my feelings, reactions, experiences, memories, dreams. Some people might not like my style, or the style of other poets; and that is perfectly fine to. Of course this is true, just as people tend to gravitate toward certain genres of music. Poetry is art, art is subjective; so then writing poetry is equally subjective I think.

How hard is it to enjoy poetry for the wonderful art of expression it is? And it is expression, so it is different for everyone. That’s just it, poetry is expression, so writing poetry is a way of expressing oneself. And that’s all there is to it.