Hm. As long as I'm going to be inflicting random spasms of bad poetry on my hapless readers, I might as well talk about my life as a poet some, huh?
It all starts here: In fourth grade, our teacher required us all to keep journals. Ten minutes a day, she said. All you have to do is write in it for ten minutes a day.
Well, okay, that's nice, and in the grand scheme of things a tiny, tiny investment of time. Of course, when you're a kid, ten minutes in front of a spiral notebook is an aeon, right? Compounding the problem is the fact that ever since I was a teeny tiny mite, I've been Lazy. Not just lazy, but Lazy. But, well, this was fourth grade, and I hadn't yet perfected the art of not handing in homework, so I grudgingly wrote journal entries in my scraggly nine-year-old cursive.
Then, one day, for no reason whatsoever, I wrote a couple of little stupid rhyming couplets. I don't remember what I wrote about -- probably something incredibly vapid, some things never change no matter how old you get -- but the teacher really liked it. She said, you should write more poetry for your journal entries!
Wait, says nine-year-old me. I can write poetry for my journal entries?
Sure, says the teacher. That would be great!
What about haiku? Or limericks? Can I write those? I inquired.
Absolutely! she says. A haiku would be a great journal entry! I look forward to it! Write all the poetry you want!
I was smart enough not to snort and say, ONE haiku? Oh, lady, you don't know me very well.
While I've long since given up any delusions that I might have about being 'a poet', I will admit that I've always had a certain facile gift for rhyme and syllable. Chiefly, I can poetick FAST.
From that day forward, I hardly ever wrote a journal entry in prose again. I could crank out a fourth-grader haiku in, literally, thirty seconds, and a fourth-grader limerick in something like a minute and a half. Which, of course, gave me almost nine minutes more to waste in front of the television! This made me, a child of the eighties, very happy indeed, in a shallow sort of way.
And the teacher was happy, believing that it took me ten minutes to write a poem; so we were all happy. Yes we were. One big happy suburban school family glued together with rhyme and syllable.
And of course, I went through a period in high school where I wrote abysmal and oddly-formatted free verse in a tiny spiral notebook. There are always kids like that in American high schools; one out of every five high school students writes Deep Poetry, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of those... suck. I sucked hard. Never stopped me.
I still have that shiny little notebook; it was lost for years, but when my mother cleaned out the attic this year, she found it.
Whenever I start to get delusions of writing grandeur, I know how to pull myself back down to earth.
Replies: add your comment: currently 7 comments
*winces at the thought of his own high school poetry* I can honestly say that I've probably written a grand total of three or so poems that don't actually suck. Not that I write much poetry these days... unless you count the occasional impromptu filk song inflicted upon some hapless soul...
Posted by Nathan @ 10/25/2001 09:54 AM EST
I was given a similar assignment in 6th grade but by that time I had perfected the art of not turning in homework. ^_^
Posted by Celes @ 10/25/2001 10:42 AM EST
Heh... nice story. ^_^ Poetry - I suck, still suck, will always suck, amen. But, a silly third-grade assignment got me interested in writing in the first place, and for that I thank silly elementary writing assignments in general. :)
Posted by St @ 10/25/2001 10:51 AM EST
I was never much of a poet, though I wish I were. Last year, when I just could not let out my feelings in any other way, some poems just came to me, and I started a notebook. It is not eve nnear full, even thouggh I have many entries. I went to it off and on; I even wrote several entries in one day. And some of them were not that bad, in my opinion. But most of them are crap. I have hardly written in my book this year though; the whole year. Nothing comes to me very easily anymore.
You have a gift, Moon. There are others who do not.
I especially wish I could think of what to say because today my heart was shattered and broken, and I feel so lost....
Posted by Wolf @ 10/25/2001 01:44 PM EST
I hate poetry. Hate hate hate. I just finished jumping through a dozen or so hoops today to get out of a lit class because half of it was about poetry.
...okay, well, I like FUNNY poetry. Just like I like FUNNY fanfic. But thassit.
I think one of the worst things that ever happened to me was that when I was 14 or so and wrote crappyass angsty stupid teenager poetry, people liked it. Of course I never wrote any poetry again, so I guess it turned out in the end.
Posted by Ed @ 10/25/2001 07:23 PM EST
Don't let Mooncalf fool you, she has written some excellent poetry. One of her best is framed and hung in the family breakfast room as a tribute to my Mother, Mooncalf's Grandmother.
Posted by Mooncalf's Father @ 10/25/2001 07:31 PM EST
Oh, DADDY.
(As I immediately start fidgeting like an embarrassed six-year-old.)
... but he's right, I did write that poem... ahem...
Posted by Mooncalf @ 10/25/2001 07:36 PM EST
