I Love Poetry. . . Or Do I?

I love poetry. I love reading it; I love writing it. But when I say poetry, I don't necessarily mean poetry. Huh. You see, when I say that I love poetry, I 'm actually saying that I love only one specific type of poetry in particular. I love poetry with rhythm and rhyme.

A lot poetry out there has neither of these factors-- or at least none of the poetry we're forced to study in school. In fact, English teachers even encourage students to read the poetry as fluently as a book, as if the line breaks weren't even there at all. Why do people bother putting in line breaks when they don't want the reader to pause at them. Most of the poetry out there is just nicely written paragraphs rearranged into stanzas to make them prettier to look at. Yes, I enjoy reading them sometimes because, yes, they can be written very eloquently and can sound quite nice. But when I say poetry, that just isn't the sort of thing I'm referring to.

So when I say that I love poetry, I suppose I'm lying. A more accurate statement would be that I love verse. Verse-- defined as having a metrical rhythm, and typically rhyming. As long as it's rhythmical, I can even deal with the lack of a rhyming scheme. Ah, how I love verse. 

. . . And I like most poetry too.

As for Amanda Jernigan's poems, the last two were completely weird, but I did like the first one, "Bats". I liked the line where she said that the bats were "a serpent muscling air apart". Also, I just like bats so that probably helps...

Nature Walk

Katie’s shoes crunched crisply in the newly fallen leaves as she walked down the narrow forest path. A few lone crickets, not tired from the long night’s symphony, sung duets with the birds in their gleeful wakeup call. A cool morning breeze tickled Katie’s face, bringing with it the fresh autumn scents of pine needles and dew. She stopped and took a deep, refreshing breath, lost for a moment in the magic of the woods, untainted by the hands of man, and pure after the long, cleansing rain. She was brought back to reality by the soft scurrying and chittering of a squirrel as it crossed the path. The birds were quiet now, but the rest of the forest was just waking up.  The trees and bushes were alive with the sounds of furry creatures, hurrying to stock up for the winter.

Katie heard voices ahead.  The trail was coming to an end. She would miss the beauty of the forest—the rustling of the trees in the wind and the pattering of tiny feet in the bushes; but her class would be waiting for her. The teacher was taking attendance when she arrived; she was the last one back.  As the students headed back to the bus, Katie could hear the girl in front of her chatting with a friend.

“I love walking in the woods! There’s just so much to see--” She cut off, stopping for a moment, then hurried forward, whispering guiltily to her neighbour. Katie smiled to herself. She would never be able to experience sight the way that girl could.

Katie was blind.

But when she was in the forest, she could see the world in a magical way that girl could never imagine.