Hello Everyone!
In writing and writing about poetry, I found that they both require critical thinking. As you write, you are constructing a piece that engages the audience and invites them to participate in determining its interpretation. As you write about poetry, you use your critical thinking skills to piece together what the poem could mean, looking at things such as the writer, the political, economic, and social environments that may have influenced them, as well as their personal biographies. By exploring outside of the poem, you get an insight into what is going on inside it. While they are not entirely based on reality and use more figurative language, they often have an underlying meaning rooted in the writer's reality or the time in which they were written. Writing about poetry and even watching it spoken inspired me by giving me examples of what my work can be; it helped guide what form of poetry I wanted, what theme, what tones, and how I wanted the audience to interpret it. It shows that despite poetry constraints, there is still a lot of creative and structural freedom. Not only is it for the enjoyment of the audience, but it also allows for messages to be sent, sometimes political in a subtle way, that can spread and influence more than the intended audience, as many of us have read through our undergrad years. What I learned from this experience is how poetry can be used to express students' creative ideas and to release underlying topics they may want to share. It would allow students to think critically while being creative, which can be more engaging.
