Overall

Overall this was a really good class. It has certainly expanded my range as a poet and showed me a variety of techniques. Before this class I only read some poetry here and there. Nothing to special just when I was in the mood which I usually wasn't for some reason. I used to write poetry all the time but in the last couple years I almost completely stopped. I gave up, did not have the time anymore and tried to find other ways to deal with my emotions. It made me sad that I almost stopped writing since it is such a nice release and I couldn't wait to take this class and get back into it. Now I find myself sitting in one of my other classes coming up with poems in my head just dying to write them down. I was a little weary about us reading so much poetry in class because I'm some classes when you analyze things they generally over analyze and then the poem loses its special quality because we beat it to death. Luckily we didn't do that we went over the poems in a way that helped get the point across and not ruin the poem for me. I loved the exercises in class and how we would take an element from a poet and recreate it. I am certainly reading a lot more poetry now so I can do more exercises similar to what we have been doing in class. The workshop was also very helpful because I usually keep my poetry to myself so it was interesting to know how other people saw it. The workshop also helped me start revising because I usually hate revising my poems because I don't want to lose the raw complexity from my poems. All the feedback though helped me at least want to revise even if I don't think it comes out as original as it was to start with. Overall I really loved the class and would take a million more poetry classes if I could. Yes it had it's moments were the poems were driving me nuts and some poets I just didn't understand at all but that is all part of the process of creating and understanding great poetry.