Anyone can sit and write their ideas and imaginations in the form of a poem. This, by definition, makes them a poet. Many people, however, believe there is a difference between the occasional writer and the professional writer. The professional writer usually has a deeper passion for the art of literature. Melanie Goodreaux, a professional writer, showed the Seminar 1 class that poems written by our classmates and poems written by known poets are equally expressive and important. In fact, poetry written by our peers is more meaningful to us because it is easier to relate to the ideas of classmates. Melanie Goodreaux helped the class realize its creativity by having us read poems by accomplished authors, and then use those poems as templates for our own writing.

The first poem the class read collectively was, “Wild Geese”, by Mary Oliver. Melanie started by giving the class a brief summary about Mary Oliver. Oliver was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1984 and the winner of the National Book Award in 1992. “Wild Geese” serves as a positive poem that involves the speaker letting out stress. Oliver starts the poem with, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred of miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Melanie Goodreaux explains to the class that Oliver’s speaker in the poem is expressing that there are many pressures a person faces in life. These pressures, however, should not control your life and it is important to take a step back and realize that the only obligation a person has is to do what that person desires. This explanation helped the class realize that we all have stresses in our lives and then Melanie suggested that we use Oliver’s poem to write about our own pressures.

Once the class was done writing, students volunteered to share their poetry. Many students wrote about stress they face in their lives and this led to a realization that many of us face the same stress: the stress of getting high grades, the stress of fitting in, and even the stress of putting away change in our wallets while customers behind us become frustrated. The exercise of using professional writing as a template for the class’ own thoughts and ideas helped people realize that writing poems does not have to be about deep symbolism and foreshadowing, it could simply be a mechanism for people to reduce stress by writing their problems on paper.

Poetry is viewed as the fundamental art of literature. Poems are different from prose literature because poems usually have rhythm and this rhythm is attractive to readers because it synchronizes with a heartbeat. In reality, poetry does not have to follow a specific style or rhythm. Poetry is an expression and only the author decides how the poem’s message is conveyed to the reader.