College has killed poetry for me. Well, perhaps just this one class; Creative Writing. I love writing, I really do. It is structured, yet spontaneous. It has rules, but no inhibitions. I learned this when I took a creative writing class in high school, and fell in love. There was no textbook you had to follow by, it was "write whatever the hell you want and get away with it" class. I felt that maybe this college creative writing class would be the same way, with maybe a bit more maturity. Boy, was I wrong. The poetry we're required to write in this class is too cut and dry, too by the book. You can try to be creative, but you definitely have limits. Sure you can abandon the forms and structures, but I don't feel the freedom to write whatever was on my mind. Write what the textbook tells you to write; write what the professor wants to hear. I don't feel accomplished or proud of really anything I have written. And okay, honestly? When did poetry become so subjective? If you ask me, poetry is a form of art. Art, is objective. You can not grade art, art has no boundaries, no limits, no rules. Anything can be art. Now, you can break down poetry into the technical terms such as alliteration and syntax, but you can't grade the poetry on how well those things work. Also, you can not tell the author that their poem is "unsuccessful" because it does not have enough of these technicalities. Poetry is open to interpretation. In fact, poetry is a form of interpretation expressed through words and language. It can not confined or defined, and to do so is immoral to all writers.
I'm reminded of that movie "The Dead Poet's Society". My first creative writing class was conducted just like the class in the movie. Robin William's demands that they rip out the introduction to poetry in their textbooks because frankly, it's trash. They made their own rules, they had no rules. That what the sheer beauty of it. I don't want to be forced to write with poetic line and rhythym or worry about my syntax and diction. College is teaching me to think of poetry by the book, demanding that I write with all the rules in mind. Screw the rules. I don't need any stinking rules. I would love for a professor that did not over analyze every word in a poem or story and try to get about eight different underlying metaphors out of it. I just want to write so people can read my mind, free of technical terms. I want my writing to be free. Like in the end of "Dead Poet's Society". You can't grade somebody on their artwork, you can't fire someone from their job because of what they believe in, and you can't cage the freedom of expression. So all I'm doing, is standing on a chair shouting, "Oh Captian! My Captain!"
