I'll miss you!

Yesterday in traffic, returning home from a doctor’s appointment, I began reading excerpts of essays, poems, and written responses from English class. I began telling my mom about how moving English class was with our exploding reading of “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved.” I read the poem, shared why it resonated with me and why the experience in class was so heartrending. I even read my response that I prepared for class. I couldn’t utter how much I loved the class. At one point my mom sarcastically said, “And you thought you hated poetry…” It was pretty ironic that I was reading this poem to my mom because I hadn’t realized that a part of me did love poetry. I always would tell people I hated poetry. Yet here I was stuttering due to my excitement and moving experience I wanted to share. Poetry has never been my favorite, and is always dreaded for homework, but yesterday I realized that I have always had a secret passion for poetry.

Looking though my poetry notebook, I realize that I have written some amazing pieces of analysis due to this secret passion for poetry. Loving something allows you to put more effort into it. Therefore, the analyses of poems that resonated with me are very detailed and well written. I can pinpoint four poems that have been most helpful to me during my study of poetry. The first poem being “The Things I Didn’t Know I Loved.” I learned to appreciate and love the small things I never did a year ago from today. The poet states, “At eighteen our lives are what we value least.” He was right that we don’t appreciate much, but now that I am soon graduating and moving on with my life, I have realized that I am going to miss all these small details that make this my home. I’ll miss coming home to a loud house with my brother’s music blasting and my mom on the phone. I’ll miss sliding across the hardwood floor each time I walk from the mudroom to the kitchen. I’ll miss the mornings I tip-toe into my brother’s or dad’s room to steal their over-sized sweatshirts to wear to school. I’ll miss my four mile run that feels as if I’m running into the wilderness. It’s the small things that I never knew I loved, until I realized that I won’t have these trivial things in my life next year at college. This poem has taught me to appreciate and love. In this case, I never knew I loved poetry.

I realized today that I am going to miss Senior AP English. I am going to miss the poem-a-day and the intellectual, moving discussions we have. I am going to miss the days that I, along with others, try to hold back the tears. I am going to miss the mandatory reading and poetry assignments. AP English has made me a better student and person. I have learned to read and write better, especially in regards to poetry. I have learned how to read and analyze a poem. Looking at my first entry, I notice that I paid too close attention on the particulars and was not able to grasp the larger idea. I was thrown off track several of times in my writing. Now, with plenty of practice and class discussions, I have grown and can write very direct, meaningful responses. I am able to relate the lesson each poem relays to my own life and learn from it. At the beginning of the year I would naturally bypass the lesson the poem is teaching, but now it causes me to reflect and act upon it. I can say poetry was life-changing, but that would be too dramatic. However, I can truthfully say that poetry has affected me positively, especially in this last academic semester. I have discovered that I enjoy reading and hearing poetry, even analyzing it if I find a connection to the poem. I find that analyzing the poem creates a strong bond between me and the poet. It feels as if the poet speaks directly to me—“You must change your life” (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”), “[You] must have/ the stubbornness to accept gladness in the ruthless/ furnace of this world” (“A Brief for the Defense”), “At eighteen our lives are what we value least” (“The Things I Didn’t Know I Loved”). I hope to start reading poetry leisurely because it teaches me how to live my life. I know there is a large chance I won’t continue on with poetry, but I hope I fall in that small chance. I hope my secret passion for poetry will grow stronger, for it will guide me each day of my life.