Monday, April 9, 2018

Writing class: Artists Among Poets

What I learned this year:

            One of the earliest and most challenging things I learned this year is how to create and use a blog. Online media has always been a challenge to me. Personally, I prefer using paper over a computer, and I’ve never been one to express my feelings to the world. Even though I know that nobody has read this blog, it makes me happy to post on it. It is a new outlet to share with the world. Nobody needs to read it, but it is there, ready to be seen.
            Over the class time I learned a brief summary of almost all the eras of poetry. We started with simple stuff, like tying a poem to a piece of art. Then it got way more complicated when we had to create a symbol. After that things started to become super fun. It amazed me to learn how poetry tied into every art movement. It seems that both artists and poets thrive to do the same thing. Both want to express themselves and create something beautiful.
Some eras of art and poetry are equally annoying. I always considered the people who made cubist art to be crazy. I never expected to find that there were poets who attempted to do the same thing with words. Truly, I highly doubt I will ever understand that era. On the contrary, the list poems were fun. This class taught me so much about the history of poetry so quickly that it is difficult to put into words. It amazed me how early poetry was all about what the words said, and in the end, with visual poetry, there seemed to be little to no words at all. All this combined to give me a new appreciation for poetry, and art history.

It is hard to say what the role of poetry in society today. We seem to be in this “post-modernist” era. The fact that our era doesn’t even have a solid name yet just shows that we don’t actually know where we stand today. Poetry seems to be an evolving art form. After learning how poetry seems to fallow art, I would like to say that it would be easy to explain where poetry fits in society today, but I can’t. It is hard enough to find where art belongs in society today. As well as poetry and art fit together, the two don’t really need each other. Poetry may thrive in videos and technology, or it may find another place in society. It seems that all the past eras of art and poetry still have their place in society. Poetry’s place in society today depends on the people who read and listen to poems. Today, we are not limited to the newspaper or local library to find poetry. Everyone has their own tastes in poetry. Technology allows people to find whatever form of poetry they want on the internet. Given our world’s reliance on technology, poetry’s future does lean in the favor of video poetry. Still, nothing can be proven until it comes to pass. In the end, where art fits in the society today is a question all artists seek to find, but that shouldn’t be too surprising, doesn’t everyone seek to be find a place for them and their work in this world?