Warning: The thread title is misleading; you may find poetry here, but that is doubtful.Today I went to the bookstore to buy my textbooks. For my campus, the bookstore is located in a Barnes & Noble (EVIL!), the textbook section all the way at the back, forcing you to walk through tons of books to get where you need to be.
I had stopped at the planner section, trying to find a suitable, non-bland calendar to help organize my days. It was the table next to it that caught my eye. Though small, it was set up for impact. Kudos marketing department. On it were three notebooks. Two were just single subject notebooks, but they were special. Made from 100% recycled materials, boldly decorated in as many hues of green as possible, and way to expensive.
But next to them was a smaller brown book, the cover decorated in sloppy cursive writing, which upon further inspection was lines from famous poems. It instantly begged to be picked up. Inside were beautiful creamy vellum pages, each ninety-five percent blank. The other five percent consisted of a key word/phrase and then a quote or mini “assignment” to go along with it. As I flipped the passages and read some, I became more and more intrigued.
I am no poet. And while this
book is geared towards poets and giving them a way to practice their craft, it has so many other uses.
On a lark I decided to buy it. My mind was made up that I needed this book. You see, on Monday, for the first time in my life, I start college. I'm excited, nervous, and scared to death. I haven't been in school in ten years.
In high school I always hated the fact that the writing done in English classes was always so technical. What happened to creativity? Scanning through my textbook for my upcoming English course, I find it's all technical. I don't want to get so caught up in technical writing – I mean for pete's sake, my courses this session are all technical – that I lose track of the creative side while I'm at it.
My goal with The Poet's Notebook is to bring back some of that creativity. As a reward to myself each day after I've done my coursework and studied, I intend to sit down and go through this book page by page, using the prompts to guide my mind and just writing whatever comes out.
Seeing as class has yet to start and I cannot stand to be unprepared and feel lost, (I got slightly aggravated when enrollment handed me my list of classes but didn't bother letting me know if there was a syllabus or what the funky codes under location meant, but I digress) I've already read the first chapter of each of my books. So I've decided to reward myself for that (and for finding out what books I needed and where all my classrooms are all on my own) by starting the first page of the notebook tonight. Then I figured I share it with all of Elliquiy.
I hope you enjoy my ramblings.