Writing Poems

You know what? You should write a poem. I'm serious. Poetry is good to write for a thousand reasons, least of which is because poems are assigned in English classes.

For one thing, poetry can be self-healing. For whatever reasons, poetry gets down to the very base of our thoughts and feelings, perhaps because it operates on a close to symbolic level. So, you start to write a poem and you don't always know where it will take you, and suddenly you're reaching into parts of yourself you might not have known existed. And those parts aren't always things you want to see, and the emotions you feel might not be pleasant, but they are always urgent. And that's the nature of a poem.

For another thing, writing poetry can improve your writing overall, not just your poetry writing but your essay writing, your story writing and yeah, even your research and term paper writing. It's true! Poetry forces you to come up with fresh and interesting ways to say the same things that have been said a million times before. Because let's face it, as unique as your heartbreak might feel to you, it's not. Almost everyone has had his or her heart broken. Ditto with just about every other situation and emotion known to human kind. But if a poem is halfway decent, it will find a halfway interesting way to talk about the same old things. So if you write poetry, over time you will get better at finding halway interesting and (ideally) new ways to talk about the same old things in your writing in general, and that can't help but be an improvement.

Finally, poetry is important. Like music or visual art, at its best, poetry taps into something inside of all language-speakers, something primal, something deep, and something necessary. Poetry isn't boring or dry if you don't want it to be, if you really allow yourself to go to those primal places. Let yourself discover something new today. Write a poem.