How Milton Crafted My Love for Poetry
By KENDELLE GRUBBS ‘20
Poetry gets a bad rap. When your first experience with poetry is either the confusing world of Shakespeare or the iconic “blueblack cold” of Robert Hayden in freshman workshop, poetry is hard to get invested in. It manages to be the shortest writing platform while also the most confusing. How can less than 100 words confuse me more than East of Eden? If you’ve read anything that was written before the 1900s, you know that old timey English seems like a completely different language from the vernacular we use today. Poetry is often seen as an exclusive form of writing that only the smartest of the elite can understand. Despite all of its faults, however, I love it.
When I took creative writing my junior year, I was only in it because I needed to fulfill my arts credit and thought I would be good at creating stories. I had no interest whatsoever in poetry, and was worried when I realized how crucial poetry would be to the class. The first poem I wrote was absolute garbage. I had no clue what I was doing, even with Ms. Pulit’s best efforts to guide me through the beginning of poetry making. But even though it was bad, I kept wanting to write more. Creative Writing taught me the different avenues that poetry could lead down, ones that weren’t just boring old white men writing about nature or estranged wives. We started off the year with this weird poem about a news reporter investigating a drug kingpin, and there was a parrot involved for some reason. I found myself loving every second of it.
As the year progressed, my previous apathy and reservations about the course quickly dissipated. I was no longer taking the class just to fulfill my graduation requirement, but instead actively trying to get better at writing. I was writing more in my free time and wanted to submit to publications in order to get my writing out there. When the time came for our class to start writing longer prose pieces like flash fiction and short stories, I realized how much I enjoyed writing poetry even more. I don’t remember the last time I wrote a creative piece that didn’t featured stanzas.
I’m really glad I decided to take Creative Writing because I found a love for something I never realized I would enjoy. Milton English classes don’t do the best job at advertising the merits of poetry, given that most students’ experiences with it involve Macbeth or workshop, but our writing department here is so strong; all the creative writing teachers I’ve met have had such a strong love for poetry and want their students to grow with the craft. To anyone reading this, I recommend picking up the next copy of Magus Mabus or checking out the next visiting writer on campus. Allow yourself to forget your previous conceptions about poetry and see the hard work of students and authors who pour their hearts into creating something great. I found a love for poetry by letting myself realize just how beautiful the art form is and I hope you find that same love.