Opinion/Resources/Teen Perspective
By Teen Opinion Contributor Maggie VerDught
Photos: Deposit
I’ve wanted to write about poetry for a while. It’s on the list of topics that I am passionate about, and it’s something I want everyone to care about, at least a little.
I recently connected with a student who just graduated from my high school. He’s an extremely accomplished, nationally acclaimed poet. I reached out asking for advice and ideas on opportunities that I could get involved in, and I included three of my recent poems for him to get a taste of my writing. His response shocked me — he wanted to revise my writing with me and talk about poetry!
This interaction was a blessing to me, and it opened my eyes to thinking about poetry itself in a new way. I loved it before, and I love it still. Yet now I feel the necessary weight that comes with considering its technicalities, precision and craftsmanship. Poetry is an art, and not one to be trifled with unless you are willing to grow as a writer in the process.
The most painful thing for me to realize about myself, which I had been avoiding in my mind for some time now, was that my vocabulary level has been degrading over the past few years. Not in a grotesque, dangerous sense, but in the sense that my brain is simply not interacting with enough high-level vocabulary. Without that, I can’t maintain the strong base level of passive vocabulary to write as well as I could be writing.
Writers are readers. When I spoke with this student, he shared with me something that I think is pretty profound. Actually, he was definitely not the first to say this, but he told me: “All poets are wordsmiths, but not all wordsmiths can be poets.” How cool is that? It’s so true!
What I love about written poetry, even more than spoken poetry, is that the meaning and understanding of it is implicit (this term is one which this student told me about). It’s a visual art, because there are real words on the page, and yet it is a mental exercise and pleasure for the reader and writer, because the words create a picture, an image for the reader to bask in and swallow and consume with interest. My poet friend called the understanding and emphasis created in the empty space on a page, “negative space.” Another term for me to uncover and discover for myself!
What I’ve come to understand over the past two weeks is that my poems have potential, yet they are not complex enough, because they are not descriptive enough. My pride has taken a hit this week as well, actually, because I have lived in my own little world with poetry for a long time. Me and poems, my poems and me. They are, largely, representations of my emotions at a certain point in time. Most of my language is simplistic, and imagery is used, of course, but not in a detailed or puzzle-like way.
Poetry is the art of crafting a puzzle that is mentally satisfying to put together, yet not so lexically complex and strange that one is left in disgust and total misunderstanding. It is a difficult balance for a poet to strike. An unbalanced puzzle is one in which pieces are essentially missing — they exist, but the person putting the puzzle together cannot see the pieces; they are so camouflaged behind the wall of words that it is utterly dissatisfying to discover the mystery. And so it is with poetry.
Poetry is a complete frame of mind, like a language. It takes practice, planning, and revision, just like regular writing. Yet there’s something special about it, because as a more image-harsh representation of a situation, it holds stark emotion and thus drives the connection between the poet, reader, and the poem. You must engage the reader, like normal writing, but not overemphasize unnecessary things. You essentially have to find a perfect balance for everything, and that depends on your style, audience, and purpose for the poem in general.
Poems aren’t perfect the first time you write them, as I’m figuring out. But the first draft of a poem is still special in its own way. A first draft may be considered “poor” in a polished, literary sense, yet still contain meaning in its simplicity. This is because it means something to you as the writer, personally. The beauty here is that you can see the difference between your high level poem, and your lower level poem, and you can revel in the growth that you have achieved. You revise the piece to make it refined, more poetically professional, and further its lexical complexity. I’m increasingly aware of my room to grow in this area.
I’m very grateful for the ways in which poetry has shaped me. It has allowed me to lay my emotions bare, forced to describe my experiences in human words. I love it, and I hope that you will consider reading or writing poetry; there is something for everyone, and it is not a “girly” pastime or a weird, artsy obsession. It is a cry of the soul, transcribed into written words, which people share because that is what we are made for. We are made for connection. God has created us this way, and He has shared His greatest literary work with us to treasure. There’s a plentiful amount of poetry in the Bible! If that’s not the most convincing reason for us to at least read poetry, I don’t know what is. If anything, I thank you for reading my thoughts about poetry here.
May God bless you richly as we begin the month of June! Have a great week!
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Maggie VerDught is a high school student who enjoys learning about culture, news, and politics.
She is passionate about sharing the truth, especially with her generation. Maggie loves to run, read, and write poetry in her spare time.
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