I suspect I’ve written about a thousand pages of literary work so far through my high school career—give or take a few hundred—of which about three-fifths remains unpublished; no peer, teacher (in the case of essays and projects), or reader has seen it. This is good, because the majority of that three-fifths fraction is “trash tier.”
“Trash tier” effectively means that the writing is either not up to my (mostly) self-imposed standard of quality, doesn’t represent my views well, is unnuanced or badly researched, or too small for a single release and too different to package with something else. I don’t expect the Vibe to take up my unused fourteen-page explanation of the 1970 Chilean Political Crisis any time soon.
That’s all well and good. The truth about writing is that even most final versions of works that do get published are completely unrecognizable to their original forms. Nearly all of that thousand pages was prose…and very long—which are only loosely related. Oxford says prose is “written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure,” which I think is a specific enough definition for our cause. My prose at least tends not to bother with conciseness to a great degree unless it benefits from it a great deal (which to be fair in most cases it does). The flexibility of prose is partially why I could insert that previous line about the Chilean Political Crisis and expect to get away with it. Of course the writing does still have to flow and make sense logically—I couldn’t say something completely unrelated without it being jarring, even if Salvador Allende of Chile’s Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) coalition became the first Marxist to be democratically elected President in Latin America on September 4th, 1970.
That’s why as someone who writes a lot of essays (I don’t want to call myself an essayist), I appreciate prose very much. It gives me the freedom to contextualize when I need to contextualize, explain when I need to explain, digress when I need to digress—to explain a point with nuance. It gives me the freedom to elaborate under very little restriction.
In that way good prose is neither a challenge for you—the reader—to understand nor me—the author—to write. Most people write prose. That’s not to say prose isn’t romantic or funny—it absolutely can be. It just gives the writer more choice to express themselves. A close friend of mine writing a letter to an even closer friend of hers asked how to improve her prose, and I suggested varying sentence structure—it’s an easy way to make the writing seem more dynamic.
But for that friend: I included a little addendum beyond varying short and long sentences. I said: “passionate writing should sound a little poetic.”
What did I mean by that?
Most definitions of poetry suggest the form requires a distinctive style and rhythm to convey the expression of meanings and ideas. If prose gives the author the freedom to vary their sentence structure and choices to express themselves, poetry doesn’t—and in that way it forces a hyperfocus on one specific message. Verse gives the work more chances to become “self-sufficient.” It forces the text to define itself rather than being defined by the author and what the author has to say.
That’s why of the unpublished part of that thousand pages, a larger portion is poetry than in the published part. More of my verse is trash-tier in comparison to my prose because poetry has to be so pinpointedly decided on what its purpose is that it’s hard to get right. Oftentimes—the same traits of expression, density, and such that in general make poetry good also make prose good.
But the difficulty of writing poetry is what makes it rewarding. It’s so much harder to make a poem that feels right, expressive, and then still have it feel right the next time you look at it, that when you do get something that isn’t trash-tier, it feels special.
In that way, being good at writing poems makes you better at writing prose. It trains you to write restrainedly and say important things, such that when you get back to prose, you’re more expressive doing so. Any good prose writer should attempt verse because it’s so rewarding to do so. When you have such freedom for self-expression after something so limiting, it gives you more inspiration to experiment with identities—both your identity and that of your work.
Anyone who wishes to become a better writer should become a better poet. And the only way to become a better poet is to write often. Even if nine-in-ten poems you write are trash-tier, one good poem is often reward enough for your effort.
…
Poetry is a thing people want to enjoy, but it may just seem incomprehensible. Poetry is hard. That’s obvious. I believe a large part of that is just because we don’t teach poetry and the structures behind it. There is no “poetry” class in South Brunswick High School; although if there were an A.P. Poetry I bet you there would be. Our English program is very loosely split into language classes (A.P. Lang. and College Comp.) which focus on nonfiction prose analysis and literature classes (Englishes I, II, III, IV, their honors variants, and A.P. Lit.) that focus mostly on fiction prose analysis. A.P. Literature does focus on poetry to a level, but that focus is not on the structure of poetry, nor is it about creating poetry—just analyzing poetry to recognize devices for the examination.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the only class where a student can seriously “attempt” poetry in our school uses said attempt to prepare for a standardized test. It’s a very surface level view of poetry as an addendum to prose instead of the self-sufficient, high-level craft it is, but I wouldn’t expect more from a school which has even denied numerous requests for poetry clubs. It’s a flattening of the humanities because it implies all the benefits a student may get from poetry are limited to those which would be required for them to get from the basic analysis required for a College Board curriculum. Our school offers courses in Organic Chemistry, in Modern Physics, in Differential Equations, and other post-A.P. courses in other fields, and student-run clubs focusing on them. Taking an English course is required all four years of high school because the administration recognizes that English is important in understanding the world, but it still does not comprehend the need for any post-A.P. English class—poetry or not. What this does is trap students into a curriculum which limits them from wider exploration. When we forego higher level thought and analysis as would be required for the construction of high-level literacy and decide we will only have the A.P. courses, that’s us—as a high performing district—doing the barest of minimums and failing in helping students progress.
…
There’s also nothing stopping the Vibe, which already often embraces a literary nature for our essays, from embracing poetry. As such, I’ve decided to try and make that unpublished list a little smaller and include some of my own poems. In truth the whole prose/verse essay was just an indulgent avenue to explain my own poems here. But I do hope that this piece as a whole does break some barrier such that more poems are published in our press. I encourage other Vibe contributors to officially write and publish poetry, for all the many benefits it provides!
I must warn you—I’m not a poet. Poetry, as I’ve said, is very hard for me to write. Take this as an attempt. They don’t stick to any formal rhyme scheme but I do believe they are very structured.
Too Much Himalayan Salt May Lead To Thyroid Problems
Pink Himalayan salt lamp—
Sits in a corner of your room.
Biding his time for when your light demands—
Turn him on to unalkaline bloom.
Some salt gets tasted or seasoned in love,
But salt lamp of yours just waits up above.
Idles—no iodine on his pink suit—
Proud but obedient, abrasive and rude.
None of the other salts like him at all:
Servile, slavish, sycophantic (banal
Acids said things to him as such).
But dandy here up on his shelf could
Never be basic as much.
His time would come—
He’d be switched on.
Those lights above had themselves no charm—
His potential when bright could beat them all—
He was like us—
Wanted to be loved—
As an un-iodized pink lamp passing time does.
Then one day he fell back to the ground—
Thousands of pieces like the salt he was.
Pepper Poem
Pepper poem for morning app:
Pepper on it faintly.
Pepper goes on eggs and toast—
To make King’s breakfast tasty.
Pepper poem for luncheon main:
Pepper on it well.
All good children go to Heaven.
All bad ones to Hell.
Pepper poem for eve’ning tea:
Pepper on it none.
Lords in castles have it settl’d.
You go have your fun.
Pepper poem for dinner’s feast:
Pepper on it all!
So when they lift that silver cloche—
The King is dead.
Long live the King!
