Free verse poetry is my favorite non fiction shape. It’s my favorite shape for any type of work that I entertain to write, but I do find that it’s not suited for everything though I wish it were. This chapter on shape really has me thinking about the writing process and how that shapes the way our work turns out. I found myself thinking about the anecdote on Camus’s character and completely related to him/her. In the context that I have been told that “you only get one first impression,” I do see writing as a way to impress readers with my skill. Which upon writing the previous sentence feels and seems horrible. I obsess over the right way to begin anything. I think, “If I can’t best “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” then why bother?” There is such immense pressure in getting it right, that I most times have nothing to structure in the first place. I think that’s where my admiration for free verse flourished, this idea that not only did it not have to be right, but it can be anything and say anything…like Jazz.
I would like to introduce more structure into my writing and outside of it in the way that I support it to the end. Like having it physically take shape on the page through perseverance, and inviting some of the freedoms of jazzy poetry into my rigid ideas about what should make me a good writer.
