...And so it begins.

Ever since the first time I stood in front of a classroom of teenagers and attempted to work through a unit of poetry with them, one thing has become quite clear. Students have a really odd and fascinating relationship with poetry. During the spring semester of 2008, I asked students to answer a simple question: "What comes to your mind when you think about the word "poetry." The answers stunned me. I had always been quite interested in poetry, completing my first poem when I was like eight years old and all I could do was model everything after the country songs my grandmother would play in her tan Chevrolet Blazer. However, my students - Creative Writing students nonetheless - overwhelmingly disliked poetry. In fact, one student put it on par with ripping his own teeth out with a pair of pliers. Another simply turned in a sheet of paper that just read "No." As a student teacher, I was terrified. I had spent an entire semester scheming up a billion and one ways to present poetry to my Creative Writing students (who, in my mind, SHOULD HAVE LOVED POETRYALREADY), and, sitting in front of me, was a pile of student responses claiming that poetry, in general, sucked. Hard. However, what I learned over the next three weeks (and continue to learn now) was that students disliked the poetry they had been presented, not poetry in general. Students couldn't care less about a road diverging in a yellow wood, and they wanted to shove the red wheelbarrow up a white chicken's backside. But, once introduced to the poetry that isn't published in textbooks, but rather in the ears of a coffee shop, across the minds of a college auditorium, or on the grey walls surrounding a classroom, their minds were changed. Poetry was no longer a series of long faces, boring lectures, and meaningless notes; it was an experience. It was an opportunity. It was an autobiography written by the thoughts they had been taught to file into the nether regions of their teenage minds. Most importantly, poetry had finally become a reflection of themselves. The poems on this blog will attest to this. At times, you may find the poems misguided, poorly-conceived, technically unsound, juvenile, and possibly even offensive. Other times, you may find yourself astounded, excited, impressed, blown-away and picking your jaw up from the floor, as I have countless times over the past few years. They are raw. They are beautiful. They are thought-provoking. They are real. Most of all, they are just like the students themselves.
- Barkdoll