takingstockofwhatmattersmost:

Definition: Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Poetry has been known to employ meter and rhyme, but this is by no means necessary. Poetry is an ancient form that has gone through numerous and drastic reinvention over time. The very nature of poetry as an authentic and individual mode of expression makes it nearly impossible to define.

I never knew I could write until I went to college. In high school my English teachers marked my papers up so much for misspelled words, run on sentences, fragments of sentences, and commas in the wrong damn place, that at one point I was getting D’s on my papers sophomore year. I hated English class and LOVED math class, not that I did too well in Trigonometry… In college though, I had a History professor who loved reading my answers to his essay test questions so much, that he asked me to write abstracts of Bahamian newspaper articles for an annual reference book he was involved in publishing. It was a semester of independent study and worked out just fine. Later, I had an Art History professor, who especially liked my compare contrast papers. I even got A’s in English. Who knew? Certainly not me. Grammar is for the birds, spelling is best done phonetically with creatively, and punctuation is optional. In my humble opinion. ~ Janean