1: To be completely honest, the list stressed me out. It makes me feel as if I have to think even more about poetry than I already do! Last night I had a panic attack about having to do those three poems and had to take an hour break and talk to one of my online friends. Thankfully her boyfriend is also a writing teacher so he helped me calm down and told me to just do my best and to not overthink it too much like I was. I think the only thing that resonated to me in that list was the idea of trying to be overly descriptive with words such as their description of oatmeal. One thing I do think I need to pay more attention to was the idea that the first bad draft does not mean you are a bad writer, you just need to make another draft.

2: I had to reread this more than twice to figure out what the poem was about and I think I understand that it’s suggesting that something is like finding an old dog having a hard time breathing and wanting to ask someone about it but finally not. This made me think of the line, breath & vision chapter of Ordinary Genius where they talk about how you can’t just write a sentence and break it up which in the end would just make it fall flat. I think that the style of the wording helps make it seem more like a poem though. If that was a sentence I think it would sound a little off which is why it originally tricked me up. Those gaps between those awkward sentences help as well, making your brain take a gap like reading a bullet point list.