Alright, well first, did you really try? Did you fold it neatly? Did you try to crumple it up first? Did you really shove it in? Yes? Okay. Did you try to find a bigger box? Did you pull apart the poem, line by line, to see if it fit then? Did you really, really try? Yes? Hmm. Okay.
This might be one of those poems. The ones that boxes just can’t contain. Sometimes poems are like people. They don’t fit into tiny cardboard boxes like we want them to. They spill over the sides, into other boxes, or maybe into none at all. And that’s okay.
Sometimes when a poem doesn’t fit in a box, it’s scary. Like when a person doesn’t fit into just one box. We want poems, like people, to fit into one box and one box only. Prose, rhyme, haiku, sonnet, modern. But what if as the author was painting their poetry to life they dipped their paintbrush into more than one color of poem. A bit of blue, haiku, a bit of purple, modern, and then an accent of yellow, rhyme. They all come together to make one poem. A poem that, yes, doesn’t fit into a box.
Boxes are overrated. Imagine if the boxes we checked defined us; female, male, straight, gay, black, white, child, adult. We are more than the boxes we are put in. Poems are too.
This is such a good poem about a poem, and I think it highlights really well why a poem or a person cannot be shrunk down and categorized as just one thing. I like they way you compare the variation in poems as a painting.
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ReplyDeleteI love how you combine two different approaches to this problem. You start out with a physical box and address different ways to fit a poem into this box, but then you shift to a more symbolic box and it works so well. The connections you make between poems, painting, and people are great.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post was really interesting! You started out with talking about methods for forcing the poem in the box, which were well-written but what really struck me was when you talked about the different types of poems. I think that that was a really simple but great idea, because it brings to mind how we already try to fit poems in boxes by labelling them and categorizing them; that it's not just an abstract question. I liked how you connected the fitting poems into boxes like how people try to fit other people into boxes, that was something I was thinking too. Overall I really liked this response because it gave really nice connections and was fun to read.
ReplyDeleteI really loved your response to Problem 1! I think your comparisons of poems to people and paintings were extremely effective and well thought out. My favorite part was how you related certain colors to certain aspects of poetry. I also think you did a really nice job wrapping the entire thing by emphasizing that we can't categorize poems just like we can't categorize people.
ReplyDeleteThroughout your post, you make many great connections between poetry and other abstract ideas. The way that you connected putting poems in a box, which very few us have done, to putting people into "boxes", or categories, which almost everybody has done at one point or another, is a very effective comparison and makes your ideas about confining poetry in a box clear. The comparison between types of poetry and colors in painting is also very original and makes it easier for me to understand your ideas. The way you introduced this blog post with that first paragraph was also very clever and a great hook for the rest of the post, as after reading those few lines, I was curious to see where you were going with the rest of the post.
ReplyDeleteI really loved this post! I really like how you compare poems to humans in the case that you can't fit both in "boxes" and characterize them in categories. I also really liked the beginning of the poem where you talk about all different ways you can try to put the poem in a box, yet you still can't. Overall, there are really great ideas in here, and I lastly especially liked the visual images you gave with the line "what if as the author was painting their poetry to life they dipped their paintbrush into more than one color of poem". I have never heard of poetry being compared to colors. Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how the narrator shifts his/her point of view on fitting poems in boxes. First is serious of reminders about strategies the reader might not have thought of, suggesting that the narrator still really wants the poem to go into the box.Then, the narrator rapidly moves onto an almost "sour grapes" tone, saying how some poems don't fit anyway. But then the narrator shifts views again, saying that it's actually a bad thing for poems to fit into boxes and fitting in boxes is a product of society. Interesting perspectives.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you personified poems. This is a good approach to this problem, and I like how you address it literally and metaphorically. You make it clear that each is unique in its own way, similar to humans. We don't want to be forced into boxes, so why should poems have to be?
ReplyDelete"Like when a person doesn’t fit into just one box. We want poems, like people, to fit into one box and one box only."
ReplyDeleteLoved this. I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I really like the analogy with poetry. Even in a class as free-form and accepting as Uni Poetry class, we still label and define things instead of just letting them speak for themselves