the semester poem
- bootsinthestars
- Jan 3, 2017
- 5 min read
This semester -- my first in college -- I decided to try something new. I've always been kind of terrible at keeping journals. Inevitably, I'll get behind a day, then have to allot extra time the next day to writing about two days, then those two days will turn into three, and suddenly it's been a whole year since I've sat down and written in a traditional notebook. I'd really like to have another go at it in the coming semester, but this one, I worked with what I had.
On the first day of classes, I wrote a poem. It didn't end where I expected it to, though; it was only when I got two stanzas in a few days later that I realized what was happening. I was writing a semester poem.
The concept of the semester poem is simple and therapeutic, which are two of my favorite adjectives when it comes to life. Essentially, it is beautifying your immortalized experiences - through the intentionally blurry lens of wordplay. Everyone's style is different, but I never write direct poems. Everything that comes out of me in stanzas ends up being heavy on extended metaphors and jumbled stream of consciousness on Google Docs, which doesn't look half as pretty as my leather-bound green journal full of neat, dated entries and straightforward daily stories. It does, however, end up sounding twice as beautiful. Its true meaning is for me and me alone, though others are certainly welcome to look through it and see if they can crack the code I've set. When I look back at it, I remember exactly how I was feeling in each part of the semester. It all comes together in something you can analyze like those strange two-line poem-things your high school teachers made you pretend to appreciate. You can look at your life at the macro-level, instead of the day-to-day loop you usually get caught in.
When I looked back at my semester poem, I found that I was most prolific when I was a little bit in love, but when I was a little bit in love, I was a little bit sad as well. And, looking back, none of the Little-Bits-in-Love ever amounted to anything important, even when I thought my heart would explode. The End of the World happened at least three times in those four months, which now seems a lot like 2012 did in 2013: irrelevant. I also found my groove towards the end of the semester, which I only realized when I reread the last few stanzas I wrote. It was some kind of victory, then, wrapping up both the semester and the 17 page poem it became all at once.
If you're struggling with recording your highs and lows, here are some tips on how to start a semester (or day, or week, or month, or year, or whatever teaspoons you're measuring your life in) poem:
There are no rules. Say it with me. No rules. The reason I failed at keeping a journal was rigid perfectionism, which meant that if it couldn't be perfect, it couldn't be started, otherwise known as why I still am slightly afraid of that little green book. Write when you can, when you want to, when you have something to say, when you have nothing to say. Sometimes I'd hear a passing phrase that stuck with me that ended up in there, and sometimes I'd stay awake for an hour after my roommate went to bed just to write an entire page at once. No rules. Nothing I say here matters more than this.
Because there no rules, I guess you can end it early, but where's the fun in that? Even if you go AWOL for an entire month, you can still come back. It's kind of fun to see how much you've changed since the last word you wrote, anyway.
If you're using the semester poem as emotional release, be candid. You don't have to show it to anyone else, so you might as well be brutally honest. That's what art is for, anyway. Telling truths that you don't want to say baldly to someone's face.
If you're trying to come out of the semester poem with a useful piece of writing that you can use for submissions, try not to edit until you're done. Over the course of the semester, I loved going back and reading what I had already written, but I left the words alone, for the most part (unless they were actively stupid). It tends to give you a purer idea of what you were trying to say in the moment and gives you so much raw material to work with when the time comes to edit that you'll be amazed.
In the end, the semester poem is what you make it, which is probably the coolest thing ever.
The semester poem was the best thing I did for my mental health this semester. It forced me to take some time to myself whenever I wrote it, something I really struggled with doing until the last few weeks of the year. I think had I not had such a flexible and emotionally rewarding project going on, I probably would have gone crazy by October. Thanks, semester poem!
And because I’m constantly shoving my writing down someone’s throat, here are the last stanzas of the 2016 fall semester, some of the many that didn’t make it into the thematically-bundled package that I created for a submission. Enjoy!
i think i tried to end this a month early looked like the end of me, anyway but guess who’s back just in time for the closeout sale all it took was solid rock bottom under my feet and i think i’m almost back to the surface, lava frozen in the water staircase to earth, almost feel like i can breathe again this bubble is some type of poison maybe i want to break out but there’s so much love here feeling a little better tonight before i fall in love again tear me off another chunk of sourdough taste in my teeth hurt from cold wind smiling don't like flying but if the plane is coming home one way or another i’ll get there miss everyone already but can't stand for a moment i need a moment this is how i learn what i knew when i was young this is how i lose time on my grandfather’s watch everything doesn't need to be something and something can't be everything i’d like to build a wooden box to hold nothing except the sky classically trained in always working toward something but even my hobby is my job i’d like something worthless so i can coin my own currency one hundred twenty days later, i am still alive.
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