Poetry

My past experiences with poetry have been limited and truthfully, very boring , but in third grade I clearly remember keeping a journal with all of my poetry that I wrote and also some of my favorite poems by the famous poet, Shell Silverstein. I remember one of them being titled "I'm mad" which was all of my problems from that day including walking through a spider web and having my younger sister take my gardening shovel. I think that back in third grade poetry helped me relieve some of my elementary school stress, and if I started writing again, could be a good relaxation device.

Also at Lincoln elementary school, my teacher would let us pick our favorite poems that we wrote or that we read out of our poetry book and read them in our circle time.  I would always read poems by Shell Silverstein because his poems were simple yet pleasing and funny. His interesting and random content made poetry fun for us, but now that I look back on them they definitely say something else. His poem Where the Sidewalk Ends  for a child was about, literally, where the sidewalk ended and the world dropped off into nothing, but now it is about a place where everything is better, but to get there is a challenge but the chalk arrows will always give a comforting sense of direction.  I agree with all of the pleased kids, that he is a good poet and my favorite so far.

Whenever I think of poetry I dread it. Most likely because of my horrible job in the poetry out loud competition, I really don't like poetry.  Memorizing words is very difficult for me and that is what I think of when I think of poetry. Writing it is not bad, it is actually pretty fun, but reading and analyzing it seems to ruin it because it is suppose to be what you get out of it without going deep into it as a school assignment.  If we could just spend a class period where we get an object or an idea and write a poem of our choice about it, that would be good. Or if we go outside on a nice day... even if I don't like it I can still make it fun for myself.