Blogging Is Like Poetry

Good poetry, at least.

In my Poetry for the People class, we have to workshop a new poem every week in group of 6-8 fellow student-turned-poets. For the first few weeks, I wrote about broad abstract themes: why I’m beautiful, what it’s like to be afraid of losing someone you love, etc. What I was writing was my truth, but it came out like fluffy bullshit, and what’s worse - no one really got it.
Finally my student-teacher gave us the golden key to writing good poems:

Show a complete dramatic event.

Basically, tell a story. No one wants to read another tired poem rhyming democracy with hypocrisy or segregation with liberation. Even when the message is true. We want to hear stories. We want to hang onto each detail of the kind of story that I might giggle over with a friend over scrambled egg brunch, or write down in my red cloth-bound journal to reread years later. This blog will be my attempt to share those stories.