Before middle school I had never thought of myself as a good poet, therefore I hated poetry. I was too stiff about it, I tried to make it perfect. I do that with everything, I'm a big perfectionist, and that gets very frusterating when I try to make things perfect and I'm not able too. This also contributed to my big dislike of poetry. But in block during seventh grade my teacher announced that we were going to be doing a poetry unit. Of course there was a loud chorus of groans and complaints, and my voice was part of that. But this was when I started to finally except the fact that poetry really wasn't my thing.
With that realization came a surprising event.....The first poem I did was amazing! It worked well together and expressed feeling while still keeping within the boundaries of the form of poetry. Apparently to write poetry all you have to do is relax! My lack of caring allowed my mind to go places where it had never gone before, i became creative for like the first time in my life! We had to do many more poems, and each one I did was better than the one before it. It got to the point that when we were done, the teacher chose my collection of poems to show to the class as an example. I was so proud of myself!
This event completely changed my vision of poetry, I learned to not only appreciate, but enjoy writing and reading poetry. I've gotten better and if I had the time, I would not mind writing poetry on my own time. My favorite part about poetry is how deep and full of emotion a short, concise section of a poem can be. Or how different poets are from one another, creating a wide range of poetry that that goes with any ones specific preference.
