Poetry Unit Reflection

Poetry has been a vital, real part of my life for some time now.  This has become apparent to me through this poetry unit, which has allowed me to answer the following questions.  

 This is a tough question to answer, because I have grown up reading poetry and usually I either love it or hate it, there isn’t really an “in-between”.  So when I was asked “What place does poetry have in your life”, I was a bit confused.  Being someone who’s favorite pastimes have always been reading and writing, poetry has just come along naturally with that.  In short, poetry is, and always has been, something I’ve enjoyed immensely, but something I don’t want to get too deep into.  My mother used to work at the Oak Park Public Library and she organized all the teen programs.  One of those programs was the poetry slam/coffee house that she held one Saturday every month.  Sometimes she would take me, and I absolutely loved it.  It just had that feel you get when you read beat poetry, that sophisticated yet aloof aura that you want to experience, but also want to stay away from.  Those nights have taught me poetry belongs to everyone, and I know from the emotion and depth of the poems I’d often hear.  From moody and mad at the world teens, to the security guards at a library, to even the nerdiest IT guys.  

Although those poetry slam nights taught me that the life and experiences of poets affect their poems, I’d like to elaborate.  One person everyone should know, Oscar Wilde, really proved that statement to me.  You might know Wilde was prosecuted and sent to jail (then spelt/referred to as gaol) and that he wrote many reflections from his experience.  His best known from those works, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”  clearly expresses his feelings about jail and details his experiences.  “Dear Christ! the very prison walls/Suddenly seemed to reel/And the sky above my head became/Like a casque of scorching steel/And, though I was a soul in pain/My pain I could not feel.”  was written in response to the bleak conditions of the prison he was kept in.  

From my personal experiences, to those of Oscar Wilde’s, I have found that poetry has a place in my life, and can be part of everyones’.  I have also learned that a poet’s life can greatly influence their work.