Blog 1

Although I haven’t had much experience with writing poetry, for our first imagery assignment I found myself drawing inspiration from past memories and experiences that I want to hold on to. At first I tried just looking around the room to get inspiration, but I realized that it’s important to write about something that matters to you in some way or another. Eventually, I chose to write about swimming because it was a big part of my life until college when I stopped. Before this assignment I had never really thought about the experience of swimming in such vivid terms. But when I was forced to break down each movement and describe the feel of the water, smell of the air, and pressure of the waves it actually helped to solidify the memory for me and made it feel like it was just yesterday.
I think that’s one of the most captivating things about the type of imagery poetry that we have been studying, as it has the power to truly capture the essence of a moment. It forces the poet and the reader to think about ones experiences more detail than ever before, which makes common events suddenly become uncommon and interesting. I think this is helpful because it makes poetry accessible and relatable to everyone because any topic is fair game to write about…even if it seems too simple.