Experience #2 Visual literacy/visually representing - Intro To Poetry

First and foremost, I HATED this class. Like hated it with every bone in my body and every ounce of body mass that I have. Poetry is uncomfortable, it is hard to understand, it is often hard to write and it is one of the most common nightmares of English teachers nationwide. Regardless of this, I learned a lot about poetry and how it works and as much as I hated it the class actually benefited me. Because of this class I discovered a lot of poetry that really resonated with me and has stuck with me through the rest of my collegiate career, of course most of the poets that I have grown to love are dead and not really high school appropriate but at least I gained an understanding of some parts of poetry that can be carried into my future classroom. Just a FYI one of my favorites was Sylvia Plath who died after several suicide attempts and is definitely NOT school appropriate..but she was a great writer. Anyway! This class challenged me to write a lot of my own poetry and made me realize how hard it is to reach inside your own mind sometimes. From this experience I really do feel like I will at least be able to teach my students the bare minimum of poetry and help guide them through potentially writing their own, regardless of how uncomfortable it is. I learned the formatting of poetry from this class as well as how to pick apart poetry to discover a deep meaning... unless the poem is about a red wheelbarrow. 

Here is an Ekphrastic poem I wrote for this class: 
      "Lost"

Getting lost at lost lake

Getting lost is not a waste

This is a journey I will take

A journey I am willing to make

Left path, right path which will I take

One of stone, one of bone

From the skeletons in my closet

And a journey I once took