This week gave me a little bit of a surprise in class. This week as we read our poems I felt a little bit nervous about it. I chose to distribute copies of my first poem from the class. As can be a danger in poetry, I was afraid that people wouldn’t have any understanding as to what I was talking about in my first poem. Some of the language did have added depth to it.
First we started off reading the poems of the members of our group. It really impressed me just how far many of my classmates had come with only a few weeks of instruction. Albeit, I have no clue how much experience they’d had beforehand, but they were impressive nonetheless.
Then came the opportunity to read our poems out loud. I was the third in line to read, still very nervous. When my turn came I made it through the reading just fine with minimal stumbling in my speaking. Following it: silence. I was afraid I’d just failed to connect to any of the audience. However, after the silent seconds dragged out for what felt like minutes, a voice spoke up telling me that it was a very good poem. Everyone seemed to get a general idea of just what the main story line was and found it enjoyable. This was a huge confidence booster. I only felt bad that I couldn’t give a few better comments on the other poems.
