Syllable limits, rhyming techniques, passages from other stories, and limits on the lines, are just four of the many structures and regulations included in poetry, imagine writing something under these strict rules, for anyone who has written poetry, you must know what a challenge it is, and how tough it is to write under such strict constraints. Poetry also allows people to face a more abstract side of themselves, which is why there are so many supporters of the art, and is why the iSchool is offering a poetry class as a module this quarter.

This module focuses on the performance aspect of poetry, and how poetry should be read aloud. Students will write their own poetry and submit it to CCNY’s annual poetry contest. Some students will make the trek to CCNY later in the year to formally perform their work.

The students took a trip to the Poet’s House in downtown Manhattan to gather some new inspiration for their poems and look at other people’s work.

Poetry is a different format for students to write, it has less focus on the traditional rules of writing, and imposes new challenges, which allows students to use a different part of their brain. As opposed to normal essay writing, a poetry student will focus less on something like punctuation, and will focus more on the symbolic content of their poems.

“I didn’t expect to really like Poetry in Performance. I just hoped that it would be an ok class and I could just make it through the quarter. Poetry has never really been an interest, but it is something new to try, and that’s a good thing,” said freshman Edan Zamir.

The students of the module studied different kinds of poetry such as sonnets, a fourteen line poem, that utilizes different rhyming techniques. This is called a  found poems, which takes passages from other texts (usually books), and uses it to create a separate poem. Cinquain poems, a five liner without any rhymes. And a villanelle, a nineteen line poem that uses repetitive rhymes.

Coltrane Cho, another freshman in the class, said, “Poetry is a wonderful and fun way to express your inner articulate self.” Coltrane’s poems focused on the dysfunction of today’s political scene.