Reaction to the Creative Writing Symposium

The final symposium of the year was over the topics of prose and poetry, the two key subsections of the creative writing department. These two subjects are very closely related and have a large amount of overlap. Both are means of conveying ideas and both involve the written word. These two factors are some of the only concrete descriptors of the medium. There is expansive leeway involved in what counts as either prose or poetry, but there are a couple differences here and there. Poetry, for instance, tends to rely on the appreciation of sound and rhythm, whereas prose tends to focus on ideas and content. Both can work interchangeably, but for the most part, poems are shorter than prose, and prose is less rhythmic than poetry. 

Poetry is typically thought of as a set of sentences that follow a definite pattern and rhyme structure, but this is no longer true of all poetry. Many new poets experiment with poems that follow no rhyme scheme, have little to no structure, and sometimes do not even have correct spellings. This is important because current poets are challenging the status quo of hundreds of years of repetition and tradition. They are beginning to be more open minded in what it means to convey experience and emotion through the written word. There are some who are even trying to change what poems can be in the form of the spoken word. Tracie Morris recited her poem "It All Started" in a way that was more music than poem, putting unique tonal emphasis on different sections of her 12 word poem. She repeated some sections for long periods of time, and others she skipped quickly over, and the result was a performance that could not be conveyed through text alone. The poem transcended the limitations of the written word. This was a relatively small message however, and did not feel particularly fleshed out. 
Prose does not have this difficulty.

Where poetry is decisive and clean cut, prose is drawn out and detailed. Prose offers the opportunity to deeply explore ideas, characters, and settings that might be overly distilled in poetry. It allows for the lengthy examination of things that would be quickly skipped over in a poem. A short story can spend ten pages discussing the drudgery of someone's morning routine, but a poem could only capture short snippets, and as a result, lose the sense of boredom inherent in such a long description. Poetry is not worse off for its brevity though, and generally benefits from its punchy delivery. But when a minute or two of reading is just not enough to accurately and completely describe a situation, prose is where it's at. This being said, if I were to endeavor to become a writer, I would almost certainly become a poet instead of a novelist. My style caters to the creation of short and condensed lines with the ability to jump quickly from idea to idea. I do not care to dwell for too long on any particular concept or story if I can help it.