Poetry Class

By the second week, we had separated ourselves. Those who wanted to be poets sat at the end of the table closest to our professor. The rest of us congregated at the other end. Don’t get me wrong, I was a poet--a doodle poet. My poems were written like doodles--when I was bored, mostly--in class, in church, in lectures. I did not desire to become a better poet.

The class was to be a workshop and those sitting closest to the professor feigned horrification while they secretly could not wait to begin displaying their talent to the creative geniuses they believed the rest of us to be. Those of us at the other end of the table were either seriously horrified, or apathetic. The apathy was directly related to how many workshop classes we had been in before, as well as how much we valued the other opinions in the room. The latter, for this end of the table, did not equal much. Each week, we would come in and read the poems our professor had selected from those we had written the week before. I both hoped and dreaded that my poem would be in those selected. I hoped it would be, because that meant I had done at least something right, and despite the fact that I did not want to be a poet, I wanted to do something right. I dreaded having my poem on the worksheet because that meant it was about to be torn apart by my peers and professor. The author of the poem was required to sit and take criticism without explanation, because, my professor said, when people read your poetry, you are usually not there to explain why you used those words.

The first week, we were to write a poem about a moment in time (or something like that). I wrote my poem and actually put some effort into it, since this was the first of the semester and I generally do put more effort into assignments when nothing else is going on. I knew my poem wasn’t good, but I thought I had done an okay job of expressing the moment. At the very least, I thought readers would get the general idea. My poem made it to the worksheet.

The class had no clue what the poem was about. At first, the professor opened up the floor for saying good things. There was silence for a while. Finally, somebody mentioned some minute thing that I had managed to accomplish on accident. Then the professor opened up the floor for saying “what needs work” in my poem. There was an explosion from one of the girls near the professor: “Adjectives! It needs adjectives!” she cried, carefully pronouncing each consonant, including the “c.” It was as if she were trying to give my poem mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I wanted to yell at her that it was still breathing.

By the time they had finished, I wanted to cry. Not that I cared.

Poetry classes, well, writing classes in general, usually lend themselves to a certain group of people. There are writers, wannabes, and those just trying to get a degree. Let’s start with the writer. At the end of the table closest to the professor, was his prodigy. He looked like a poet, with his skinny jeans, flannel shirts, and scraggly hair. He read every poem with a slow, scratchy voice that made anything sound deep and artistic. We liked when he was chosen to read our poems out loud. His poems usually lasted for an entire page, with lines spanning the whole eight-and-a-half inches of the page horizontally and he would use words that even the professor had to look up to understand. One day, he came in and told us that his poem on the worksheet had no meaning. He had literally just written some words down on a page. We still debated for 30 minutes about what the poem meant. He just sat, smiling, like he had just played a trick on all of us. I put in my opinion to get a good participation grade, and then sat back, thinking alternately about the genius of writing a poem about nothing that begs to be interpreted and the idiocy of discussing for 30 minutes what the author had already admitted was nothing.

The BFFs hovered between wannabe and writer status. They sat on the other side of the professor. One of them would write poems involving French, Latin, and made up words. I never knew what any of her poems were really about, but the professor loved them and she was published before the semester ended. The other friend wrote some of my favorite poems that semester. She loved adjectives, similes, and metaphors, and she loved poetry. The two of them would write their poems, then show each other for a pre-class critique, which I thought was unfair to the rest of us. Not only would they correct what the other thought was bad before the rest of us saw it, but they would also explain the difficult parts to each other. Therefore, at least one person in the audience knew what the poem was about and that meant the poem was a success (maybe. What is a successful poem?).

Then there were the ones just trying to get a good grade: the girl who wrote country song poems (once, we debated for half the class time about whether country songs were art. The verdict is still out.) and, of course, a girl who wrote love poems.

And the guy who was really only trying to pass. He would come in late almost every week with only a pencil behind his ear—no backpack, no notebook, no textbooks. I appreciated his honest apathy toward the class, but at the same time wondered at his bravery. Several times, he came into class and complained, “Why can’t they have classes on something that can make us money, like song writing? Poetry doesn’t sell.” At this, the writers and wannabes would exchange glances that said, “This is art, not a job.”

After the first week, my poems began to get a little better. I researched things before writing about them and included more adjectives. I looked at Crayola’s website for about twenty minutes trying to determine the name of the exact color of the dirt I wanted to have in one poem. I also went back and rewrote the first poem, looking up statistics and bug species. I spent almost an hour looking at Google images before figuring out that a bug I had seen crawl across the floor of chapel was probably a boxelder bug. I can’t be sure, but neither can my professor, so it worked.

Toward the end of the semester, I was working on my undergraduate thesis and did not make time for poetry one week. So, I did a dangerous thing—I turned in a poem that I loved. It was kind of experimental, playing with double-meanings. The structure had been inspired by a pop song and the content by a cathedral. I had worked on it off and on for an entire summer and-- the most dangerous part--I thought it was good. It did not end up on the worksheet that week. I was both relieved and sad. A couple of weeks later, though, the poem turned up unexpectedly.

I got to class early that day and the best friends were reading my poem. “We were just talking about your poem, Elizabeth. We like it.” Relief rushed over me. If the best friends liked it, the poem stood a chance. Thankfully, surprisingly, the rest of the class agreed.

That day, I was proud to call myself a poet. Not that I cared.