Poetry

When I was in highschool after a session of wordworth's Solitary Reaper, I decided that I had to write a response poem. From the point of view of the girl in the poem, no less. While he wonders what she is singing in gaelic, she is actually wondering if he is there surveying to destroy the beauty of the place. I thought this was profoundly ironic. My teacher thought I should stick to prose.

The next poem I attempted was a year later on a boring afternoon. I remember mentioning something about the flies circling repeatedly, forlorn thoughts and devil retreating as the afternoon wore off. Devil was supposed to be symbolic of depressing thoughts, I think. Again way ahead of my time. The teacher's face became red and she asked me to heed the warning and desist immediately. One fellow classmate thought it was brilliant but when he went on to describe what devilish thoughts symbolized for him, I started considering my teacher's suggestion.

The next one came in college. As you can see I had succesfully tried to resist temptation for a long time. This time it was something about clouds reflected in a puddle. How I enjoyed it imagining that I was walking on heaven when I was young and how I walked around it now with mere care. To put it mildly it wasnt as well received as I'd have thought. They failed to see materialism, loss of innocence and other equally deep symbolisms hiding in the poem.

Only two attempts went as far as a paper after that. One was a catalogue of whatever was written in my school notebook and another about rain in an American road. So except for lapsing into a short poem under extremely stressfull conditions a couple of times, I think I can claim I am staying succesfully sober now.