As part of a "Visiting Writers Series" Fountain read poetry from her first collection titled "Burn Lake", as well as other works. Burn Lake consisted of 5 poems which were insightful, wise, and apparently worthy of a National Poetry Series Award (a true accomplishment for a poets first series of poetry). Fountain mentioned that most of the material in her work was anecdotal and taken directly from her life experiences, yet much of it also came from the things she meant to say to family and friends while growing up, but never did. Another point she made about poetry... compared to other writing, was that it doesn't necessary have to be truthful but instead just aimed at truth. I liked this a lot. Mainly because, as a student writer, it is sometimes forgotten that there is writing that exists outside the analytical realm.
In the past, I've taken a Creative Writing course however not ever taken the time to read poetry until recently (thanks, Carrie). Fountain mentioned that one of her favorite poets was Emily Dickinson, so being inspired I looked into some of her famous published work:
Through the great Waters sleep,
Though they are still the Deep,
We cannot doubt-
No vacillating God
Ignited this Abode
To put it out
(circa 1884)
From what I discovered, Dickinson's work was morbid, some of it hopeful, and a lot of reflected her preoccupation with the study of Jesus Christ, as in this piece of work. A lot of other aspects in her writing that got me thinking... spontaneous use of dashes, capitalization and constantly changing formatting. It was nice to read someone else's creative thoughts.
Extra credit aside, I was thankful I took the time to see Fountain read because she led me to a fresh perspective on writing, and led me to read something creative this weekend, reminding me just how therapeutic writing can be.
No comments:
Post a Comment