Line Breaks Do Not a Poem Make

Listen, I'm never going to claim that I am a good poet. I think I'm okay. I've never really asked anyone's opinion, nor have I ever let people read much of what I've written. Actually, my poetry teacher from second semester said he liked an edited version of this poem, which was published in the Liberal Arts Anthology last spring. But he may have been lying. Regardless, I don't know if I'm a good poet or not. But I do know one thing: poetry is not a bunch of sentences with line breaks. Nor can you hide run on sentences with line breaks. Poems have a rhythm and beat, and I don't know why people think this means that poems have to rhyme. Rhyming poems are harder because you end up trying to force syllables in places they don't belong. This is a really good rhyming poem. Good luck trying to imitate that in any way. Anyways, don't write really long sentences 'cause it's tiring*. Just as a general rule. Keep that shit short. Concise. Done.

I just really have to get this off my chest.

Like, this is not

a poem because

I split my sentence

into 5 lines

where angels

come down from heaven

and I go off

on tangents

and say random things

that might have something to do

with my topic

and then start new stanzas

for no reason

banana

now I have to

bring this back around

to make this

make sense

can you tell

that I'm making this up

as I go along?

This is not a poem.

Riese has feelings about poetry in school:

I read this essay about how teaching literature in school is ruining it. I think a teacher wrote it. I can't remember. Most teachers in most schools in America are making kids hate books by treating literature like a Periodic Table, especially poetry.

Poetry is a gift and a skill. It's one of the hardest things to do well. Luckily, 'cause there's only a tiny poetry market, so it's a good thing we only have maybe 100 living poets who truly deserve a book of their stuff to be read by lots of people right now.

So making kids memorize poetry is boring. Making kids get pop-quizzed on what record album Holden Caulfield bought his sister is boring, and it misses the very best part of learning and reading poetry and really any kind of literature, which is reacting to it however you want -- rudderless and hopeful -- and I don't have an answer for how to give someone a grade on their emotional response to a work of literature. But I think making kids write poetry is a huge mistake. Let them discover it on their own if they must and if they must than they will. Otherwise they'll just associate poetry with the experience of sucking at something. Poetry will feel miserable to them and it has to feel not like that, it has to feel like the opposite of misery.

Back to me, Emily: Also telling having exercises where kids have to write poetry and you tell them to just write whatever is in their heart/what they feel is no good. Poetry has feelings, yes, but so does your fucking diary.

"If you cannot be a poet, be the poem." - David Carradine

*Unless you can pull it off.**

** but you probably can't.