Burning Poetry

     What do you think of when I say poetry?

     I used to exclusively think of high school English class. There were the kids who worked to meet the requirements, the ones who groaned when we entered the poetry part of the curriculum, those that gained praise from the teacher but told their classmates they just threw in random artsy words, and the kids who forever swore to loath it. 

     I wasn't one of them but I couldn't appreciate what we were studying. One of the twenty some poems we would write was permitted to be a free verse. I never learned to break the rules so that I would know when the structure would add value to my writing.

     When I started writing poetry, I mean really writing, to express myself and communicate my inner commentary, I realized I wanted other people to experience it the right way. Some of that came out in my poem, Not a Poem (KTL Pg. 55).

     For many of you, the journey to understanding poetry will need a restart. Let your misconceptions go. Banish your inner critic and burn the village down(in your imagination) so that together we might draw in the ashes.

    Come Along Writers.