Just to go into a little detail about that essay: The assignment was to write a 5-7 page paper over a poem in the Norton Anthology of Poetry (5th edition). I picked a random Wordsworth poem and went with it. Now keep in mind that I didn't choose to become an English major out of any particular love for poetry. I actually don't like poetry that much. I prefer meaning to be more concrete and easy to see, as it is in prose (not so much the case with the language of Faulkner, Woolf, or Joyce, but even their works are easier to analyze than a lot of poetry to me). Believe it or not, I've made it through most of college having had to write very few essays about poetry. As a result, I found the task of writing a poetry analysis essay to be one of the most difficult writing assignments I've had in a long time. I think the main thing that bothers me about writing over poetry is that I'm never confident that what I'm writing is actually a good argument. Digging out evidence for an argument in a book is easy to me, and I'm always sure that my argument makes sense and never doubt the logic of my premise. With poetry it's different, because in some cases I'm having to look at a single word or phrase and pull a much more subjective idea out of it in order to validate my argument. Evidence that has a greater subjective element to it innately feels more flimsy to me, and as a result I find that when I use such evidence I begin to doubt my argument as whole. This is a terrible feeling to me, and it's why I found writing this essay to be a less than pleasant experience.
Nevertheless, I got through it. Now I've got the 10-12 page poetry analysis coming up to worry about. Yay!
Back to the subject of missing Week 7 Storytelling, one of the main reasons I'm really sad that I missed it is that I actually had a story idea ironed out already. Since I have time this week, I plan to follow through with it and write the story despite the fact that I won't get any points for it.
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Kyle, I know how you feel about missing a Storytelling post. I believe it has happened for me twice this semester. I hate the idea of missing an opportunity to practice my creative writing ability. As for poetry, the only poetry I've been able to get behind is Dante's Divine Comedy. I love the way the Italian gives life to the stories found in Inferno.
ReplyDeleteWow, Kyle, it's really impressive (and inspiring) that you feel compelled to write your story even though it sounds like you've been (and will continue to be) absolutely swamped with writing assignments! I will have to go read it! You must be a really talented writer because I can't imagine writing even a short paper analyzing a poem. I have a HUGE respect for people who can analyze and interpret poetry because it is a skill that I lack. Having to pull meaning and arguments out of single words is such an awesome talent! Good luck with all your paper writing!
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