So I took advantage of my savvy internet social networking skills to get some people thinking about poetry and about what their reactions are to the word "poetry"....it is pretty interesting how you can tell that some people find their voice and hear other's voices through poetry, while some automatically think of names such as Shakespeare or Poe, and then you have people like Wes...the freshman guy who has to pee. Check out the response I got!


BEFORE YOU GO TO BED: what is the first word that pops into your head when you hear the word "poetry" ...this is for a project and will help me out :)...POETRY--

emotion
My erexpression
words
love (not sure why..)
voice
rhyming :)
shakespeare
heart
liberation
smooth
recitation
creative
FREEDOM!
Rhymes
life
rappers
beauty
collyn
dirty ;-P
shakespeare
thoughts
Compassion and sympathy
smoetry
Collyn
Frustration
sappy
complicated
P,O,T,Y. I have to use the bathroom.
challenging to find the right ones to use with first graders
awesome
reading
life.
disgusting
Poe. As in Edgar.
potential
Wordsworth
:-)
beauty
snapping fingers
Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre



Cool, right? Something I also noticed was that some of the responses are very local, for instance a couple of them were about a person from GWU and one in response to a poetry band that brought poetry to the public last year at our university with open mic night. Its neat to think about how people's automatic responses to the word poetry was changed by those who share it.