Metacognition: Poetry

For the past few weeks we have been writing, and then rewriting, and then rewriting again, original poems. My first poem, I will admit, was absolutely terrible. It was cliched, boring, and arbitrary, in reality it was just kind of stupid. I didn't like it when I turned it in, I felt uncomfortable, I felt like I was abandoning a toddler in the middle of the desert and expecting it to survive even though it was completely inept. The only reason that I reluctantly turned it in was because I had read it to my mother and she told she really liked, so I trusted her opinion and followed through. This probably wasn't the best decision, but it was a decision none the less, and it was one I had to stand by. 

Needless to say the poem wasn't graded very well. So, when it was time for level two, I decided to scrap my first one and write an entirely new poem. My second poem, same as he first one, was written over the course of a school day with a little bit being written in each class, a stanza at a time, whenever something would come to my mind. The second poem, however, unlike the first, was about something very personal to me, it was about my brother.

The first time I wrote my second poem, I loved it. I was so proud of my poem and the way it moved, but it wasn't received very well. So we had to write it again, and then again, and after awhile I just got tired. I got tired of talking about my brother and I started to hate the poem so much that I dreaded working on it. I didn't want to change anything about it or add a stanza here or there because I was so tired of dealing with this issue. I hate that I feel like my brother and my parent's divorce are the only two things I ever write about, but that's what I know. And in the end, that's really all writing comes down to, describing an emotion, idea, or moment that you know best, but I feel like the things I know best aren't very interesting. I feel boring and my writing feels boring. I'm proud of all the work I have done on my poem, but I'm not proud of what it's about and I'm not proud that I know it's probably the best I could do, and it's still not very good.