intellectualleader

[intellectualleader]

Blog Post 2: An Introduction to Poetry

I like to think of a poet as someone who writes poetry. There. I wrote it. And I'll repeat it. A poet is someone who writes poetry. I feel that the only way to describe poetry is through having an experience with it. I do not think someone can tell you what a poet or poetry is. To me, rap artists and r&b singers are poets. That is how I have to understand poetry for it to make sense to me. My introduction to poetry was Rap and R&B lyrics without the music attached. Growing up, I was so fascinated with words and language that when I first got a computer, I printed out all of the song lyrics to my favorite songs and studied them, attempting to understand what the lyrics meant. How the song lyrics were formatted on the computer screen or in album booklets differed from how words were printed in books. And even though many of the verses I was printing out were designed to be sung or rapped, they resonated more when I could hold them in my hands, read them to myself, and hear them in my head. This habit helped me develop rhetoric and composition skills because the language that Black artists used in their music was a language that I was familiar with. Our assigned reading books in grammar school had characters and stories that I couldn't relate to, but because I was a great reader, I could use context clues to understand why their stories and the authors were important.

That said, I think talent is when someone discovers their gift and hones in on it. You can not be talented without practice and patience, though. A person needs to practice to improve and learn to strengthen their weakness. A person needs to be patient to overcome the heartaches and obstacles when frustration starts to creep in because progress is stagnant.

[intellectualleader]

Blog Post 1: Introduction

Greetings,

I've started this blog for my advanced poetry class and look forward to learning how to use Tumblr and become a better blogger. My main writing goal this year has been to write a page a day in a composition book on top of my writing responsibilities as an English major and nonprofit president, and so far, I have succeeded! I have a habit of writing every day, but I don't have a habit of writing creatively. If I'm being honest, I lost my writing creativity being a college student, but I love writing so much that it didn't bother me. When writing creatively, I wrote a lot of poetry that I am proud of and can't wait to publish for fun someday, but I wrote into writer's block more often than I have in academia. But that is why my page a day initiative is important because what I decided to do all 2022 is conduct research and collect data on myself. That way, when I start back writing creatively after I graduate, I'll have tons of ideas to explore. What I hope to get out of the class that I am writing this blog for is a better understanding of poetry. I have only started writing poetry because of Tupac Shakur, Rap, and R&B music. I originally wanted to be a songwriter, and I saw poetry as a way for me to practice structure and manipulating words. Now that I have evolved past that point, I'd love to learn more about the science of poetry and how it can be used to paint pictures and inspire readers.