Poetry

This can be a very scary word for writers. I know it was for me for a very long time. I would try to write poetry and it would end up sounding stupid and really cheesy. In my head poetry was something that rhymed and everything had a deeper meaning to it. So in other words I was thinking too much and now I've come to realized that the best poetry doesn't require anything you just go with it and feel it.

The first poem I wrote that I was really happy with was called "Lost Innocence" and I wrote it just after my great-grandmother died. I was a sophomore in high school and one day after I found out about my great-grandmother's passing I sat in my room and put pen to paper. I've gound that when something really emotional has happened I tend to deal with it through my poetry.

I don't write poetry consistantly, but when I do write it I feel it. That's not to say that I haven't written more light hearted poetry but I do that less. I have only ever written two love poems and both were at the request of friends for their weddings. I was a nervous wreck about it but the finished products speak for themselves.

There is one poem that I've written that I have committed to memory. On the last day of my creative writing class my sophomore year of college our assignment was to write four lines of iambic pentameter. I put pen to paper and not even five minutes later I has this:
               I like the rain most of the time
               Except when I am forced to rhyme
               My feet are wet and I am cold
               But I will always do as told
               So here I sit and try to write
               Four lines of rhyme with all my might

The moral of the story is poetry is not something you think but something you feel. Have fun with it enjoy it, and remember poetry doesn't have to rhyme.