Assignment 0

I am an environmental major here at SLU, and I declared fall semester sophomore year after I had a water pollutions class with Carrie Johns. It wasn’t the subject matter that won me over at first, but the people I had the class with. There was only eight of us, and we all bonded incredibly fast. No class was silent or awkward, and each person brought something different to the table. I love the professors in the department and the classes are interesting and demand you to think out of the box.

I’m from Jericho, VT. It’s a small town about 20 minutes outside of Burlington. We don’t have a stoplight in my town, not even one of those blinking yellow ones. I grew up with friends that I’ve kept since elementary school, and the community was like growing up with 10 sets of parents: if you did something wrong somewhere else, your parents would eventually find out.

Other than writing, I sing (with Laurentians and in the Radio Bob Band), play guitar (poorly), go for bike rides on nice days, enjoy good food and beer, and watch the Red Sox play whenever possible.

I’ve heard from the people I let read my work that when I write I am very descriptive and can capture well different types of emotions. I usually let someone read my work after I’ve known them for a while (other than classmates in a workshop setting-I feel within a workshop we all have a good deal of trust in fellow writers.)

Langston Hughes is my favorite poet, and I really got into him in high school when I wrote about his poetry and civil rights. Hughes’ work always has incredible amounts of passion but is never sappy. Some is angry, some is somber, and some is joyful. And even though he wrote many pieces about race, you don’t have to be a minority to enjoy them or take something away from them. I really don’t enjoy Dickinson because I think she is the epitome of overt and extraneous sentimentalism. We get it: you love him.

Good poetry is relate-able and intriguing. A good poem inspires you in some way-whether it be to write yourself or to think about things in a different light. Maybe good poetry re-instills your faith in something. Whatever it be about, a good poem will always stay with you.

I enrolled in this class because poetry is not my forte. I never write it, and I barely read it. I wanted to see if this class could not only help me learn to appreciate poetry more and expand my knowledge of the topic, but I also wanted to see if I focused on poetry for an entire semester, would I be able to come up with something worth reading.