"I wanted to try writing a poem that asks questions about the importance of poetry. In high school we have studied some Shakespeare and other forms of poetry that talk about heroes, their sacrifices, their great loves, and their fights. I often wonder if the poet himself, like Shakespeare, had experienced any such feelings or events in their lives; if they were really heroic characters who truly spoke from experience and tried to pass on their values through their poems.
But when I try to imagine a person writing an epic piece of poetry, I often picture a thin and lonely little man who scribbles things in his room, trying to make his life more interesting by creating epic characters on the page. So this is what my poem is about: a poet who creates a 'cage of words' that holds a lot of grand ideas an characters which may not exist in his real life.
I did a google search on Google for some forms of poetry used in epic poems, or poems with a heroic or romantic subject matter. I came up with a few forms, but I chose to mention a "heroic couplet" as a hook. It is two rhyming lines in iambic pentameter that is often used for the closing of longer poems. I tried to write the poem in rhyming couplets too. I don't know if it worked very well; it is only my second attempt at writing anything that rhymes.
In my poem, I wanted to say that poems are only made of words and they can only capture a small aspect of reality, and if we learn to look for greatness, there is a lot pf real heroic and loving people and events to find. But this should not to undermine the value of poetry at all. In the past week or two, I have thought about this a lot, and the way I would explain the value of this kind of poetry is this: they put intangible values into words, and they give us a language to celebrate and encourage greatness.
I started out with a poem that kind of makes fun of heroic poetry and their poets. But I think I am finishing this year with a better appreciation for poetry all together."
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