Between Overflow and Analysis: Writing and Writing About Poetry
Writing poetry and writing about poetry are similar in that both require you to confront emotion and language head-on, but they come from very different parts of the psyche. Writing poetry is personal and immediate. William Wordsworth once said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of your own feelings, and he was absolutely right. I always considered Wordsworth's approach but it never fully hit me until I started writing my poem for our class. At first, I stared at the page blankly, completely unsure of what to write about or where to start. However, the second I got an inkling of an idea I started writing and it went on from there. It was an overflow of emotions that I did not even know I kept repressed for so long. Writing about poetry, on the other hand, is analytical. Writing about poetry asks you to step outside of yourself and into the mind of another poet in order to trace how their words carry emotion and meaning. This remin...