Explicating Vs. Actual Writing of Poetry

I've written poetry for a majority of my life, and never really considered how much time and energy renowned poets put into their works.

Explicating is a fun and exciting process of understanding poems in new ways. Every individual may recognize a phrase to mean something other than someone else may think. That is the beauty of poetry. Thus far in my college career, I have been lucky enough to attend classes where explicating poetry was a huge factor, giving my experience under my belt in regards to knowledge of breaking a poem down to its core.

Writing poetry is now a harder challenge than it once was because I know how I can play with word usage, dialect, metaphor and simile, etc. Having fun with placing words together to form a secret meaning or the actual truth in a poem is very exciting. I love having the knowledge of what other famous poets have possessed.

It will be fun to introduce this new found knowledge into a classroom environment. Having high school and junior high students learn to read and understand difficult poems by poets such as William Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and the list can go on.

I am very excited to practice the new "exercises" I've learned in my future classrooms. These being: "wrecking the first person," "found poem" and the classic haiku. We also participated in a "poetry slam" and I think allowing students produce their own dramatic poetry, then acting it out would be a good relief and way of expression for them.

Now that my college education is near complete, I am looking forward to using the tools learned from CSUN and applying them in a classroom environmet.