Poetry

The following is a poem I wrote in the Seventh grade.

It is what was known as a "Rhythm Poem", which is where you make a point to use mostly words that have a distinct sound in order to make an entire poem that is aurally pleasing.

You see, back in the Seventh Grade they were trying to get kids into writing poetry, for some reason. I'm sure it didn't take long for them to realize that NO Seventh-grader really gets into that sort of thing. To help to remedy that apparently insignificant problem, the entire body of Seventh grade English teachers got together and came up with a whole packet of starter kits and step-by-step instructions, if you will, on how to write a poem, and they got pretty creative at doing it by making each new poem have a certain theme, e.g. the "color" poem, the "If I ruled the world" poem, the "hands" poem (where we would write poetically about someone else's hands -- this was undoubtedly the stupidest poem I ever had to write in all my years of poetry). In retrospect, this all makes absolutely no sense to me since most of us couldn't even write a completely grammatically correct sentence on our own, let alone write an entire poem. None of us had read any poetry more complex than Dr. Seuss, and this narrow-minded understanding of poetry having to rhyme every single line was quickly shot down by teachers in every English class in the school. Green eggs and ham, indeed!

I will add that Tuesdays, which were the days designated by the teachers that we were to practice writing our "poetry", were unanimously dreaded by every student in the middle school.

I will also add that I am strangely proud of this simple poem I wrote in the Seventh grade, and I will gladly say that I received top marks for it when I gave it to the teacher. But I must also say that I wrote more than my fair share of poems that were just complete bogus-nonsense, many of which received barely passing marks when handed in. I guess this is just what happens when you "try, try again."

So there you go. If that story doesn't inspire you, I don't know what will.

Rhythm Poem
By Andrew Stratford

Too tough to stop
At the sheek
Of the leek
Clink, Clunk
Piece of Junk!

I drink a drop
Of fizzin' pop
At my ol' man's shop

Just a sip
Not too quick
I pick
The rhythm.

(Applause).