My High School Poetry

Okay, so funny story actually.

I was really terrible at poetry in my freshman year of high school -no surprise there- I cringe every time I find one of my pieces tucked away in a drawer. Unfortunately, I had no impulse control, so during my writing class, poetry was practically all that I turned in. My teacher, lets call her Mrs. S, she didn’t have any exposure to my writing since then.

Fast forward to my senior year. I’ve been writing and honing my style for a while and have a good grip on it. I’d definitely say that I’d gotten much better. But, poor Mrs. S didn’t know anything about that.

See, she had my twin sister for English and they had a poetry assignment. So, my sibling of course texted me during class asking for help. I wrote her two short pieces with these guidelines: They had to be 5 lines long with 31 syllables total and be about nature. Looking back on it now, it seemed I was writing a sort of Tanka.

Here is what I gave her next hour:

1.

Deadly in the silence,

Camouflaged in with the black of night,

Unseen.

The wolf stalks its unassuming prey

With greed, with hunger.

2.

Humanity is a fickle thing,

Gluttonous and needy.

Our consumption kills all.

We take and we take,

When will we stop taking?

Yeah. I noticed that if it was supposed to be a Tanka, it is structured horribly wrong, so that’s my bad. Still doesn't suck too much though. I offered to write any and all of my twin’s poetry assignments (since she was lazy) and I did (cause I’m a pushover). Now, during this time, I also had Mrs. S during my AP Literature classes. We were supposed to write a poem about what we learned from class for extra credit. I decided, ‘why not’ and tried it out.

Let me tell you, no matter what you’re writing, never ever EVER push something that doesn't want to happen. It comes out as flat and lifeless as you feel while doing it. And that’s exactly what happened with me. I wanted the points, but wasn’t really feeling it and ended up turning in one of the worst poems I’d ever written in a while. Then my teacher tells us about my school's magazine and how they’re looking for poetry to put on it, and that she’s going to be submitting our extra credit poems to see if we get a spot. I couldn’t be bothered that day and just left it.

Fast forward a couple of days. I feel better about everything and decide to submit my poem ‘The Truth About Love’ to the same teacher, Mrs. S (since she was in charge of taking submissions). I had my name on it and everything. But when it came time to hand out thank you slips my sister and I both got one, even though I was the only one who ever submitted something.

That’s when it hit me. Mrs. S thought that the poetry that I did for my sister was hers and the second poem I submitted fit more with what my twin was producing in class. Meanwhile the piece I wrote for extra credit coincided with what she’d seen in the past. I didn’t stop laughing for a while, both my sister and I got a kick out of it. I wasn’t upset or anything, I feel like the whole thing just taught me not to rush something that wasn’t going to happen.

TLDR: In summary, my teacher thought the poem that I submitted to the school was my sister's cause I wrote all of her poetry assignments for her.