Literacy Profile

Taylor Crosby

SED407

Professor Horwitz

January 26, 2015

Literacy

I like to think that my strongest literacy is writing and performing slam poetry. I believe that this literacy is a separate thing entirely from analyzing and reading poetry. This type of literacy includes the creative element. This is not about finding out the meaning of someone else’s work. This is about creating your own personal meaning and discovering your own truths. It is about observing and acknowledging, questioning and answering, feeling and expressing, and inspiring and connecting. Poetry is an art form. 

I have loved to write my entire life. It started when I was seven when I wrote a story about five teenage girls in high school who discover a magical locker that opens to a huge mansion for them to skip class in. Of course, looking back at this story, I laugh at it. While this is true, it is also one of the first memories I have of beginning to write. I loved the idea of creating my own characters and settings and plots. As I grew older I started to write a fantasy novel about this magical world where children of different species came from jellied eggs in a glowing lake that were watched over by apparition guardians. I was always interested in fantasy novels like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter series, but as I grew even older I wanted  to write things with more meaning and more depth. 

My favorite book I was ever required to read in high school was J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Most people I talk to say that they hate this book (which, admittedly, makes me immediately fly off the handle) because they think it is too repetitive and that the plot is not well-developed. I believe that readers believe this because they are used to books being solely about the plot and the action. Readers are constantly always looking for the suspense factor. What is going to happen next? Where is he going? Who is that mysterious man? Will he end up getting the girl? Thus, many people are not used to a book like The Catcher in the Rye where the plot is very simple and rather ordinary for the time it was written. The issue with this view of the book is that The Catcher in the Rye is not a plot work but, rather, a character piece. It is all about Holden Caulfield. The entire book is dedicated to this character and this character alone. I loved how Salinger contrasted Holden’s anti-societal personality with his feeling of obligation to the innocence of children. It inspired me to think deeper about my characters. Who are my characters? How did they come to be who they are? Many books tend to use the same tropes within their setting and plots, but what differs each book from the other are the characters and their development. Since reading this book I have always put my characters first before the plot. This is not to say that the plot and the setting are not important. Looking back on it, this is this first moment that I started to create my own truths through writing. I was concentrated on revealing truths of humanity through my characters and their complicated personalities. 

I eventually strayed away from writing fantasy and fiction to writing something that I found the most beautiful of all—poetry. Poetry always amazed me. I was awed by the way that poets could convey so many things with such limited space. I was specifically interested in revealing truths through poetry, and by truths I don’t mean facts. I mean the truth in many different ways: The truth in describing as accurately as possible a single observation of something, the truth in seeing something through a different lens, etc. 

In class we learned about techniques that poets used in order to better convey their messages to their audience. I was always assigned essays within which I had to analyze a poem through these techniques. While I always enjoyed writing these papers and discovering the poets truths within them, I was always finishing these papers the night before. This was not due to a habit of procrastination necessarily, but rather to a habit of constantly using these new techniques to write more poetry. I was learning about all of these new and exciting terms (juxtaposition, alliteration, assonance, consonance, enjambment, metaphor, simile, rhythm, feet, meter, slant rhyme, end rhyme, etc.) and I always had the urgent need to try them out and see what my strengths were. I eventually learned that alliteration, consonance and assonance were not only my favorite techniques, but were my best friends. I always loved how poets would use long double “oo” sounds, liquid “l” sounds, and  soft “m” and “w” sounds to make their poetry flow and sound naturally slow. 

I became rather good at this technique and suddenly found myself writing some poetry that I actually was proud of. With every poem I felt like I was getting better. Not only was my technique growing, but so was my perception on the world around me. I would be inspired by the most random of things. I was writing poetry about goldfish and the beauty of having a 5 second memory. I was interested in the element of first experiences and the magic that some of these experiences posses and how the goldfish continuously has these magical first experiences. I was writing about the simplicity in a bird’s song, the misperceptions of linear time and lived time, the mystery of another’s mind, etc. Everything to me is a possible poem. Everything is a possible truth. I hope that one day I will be able to publish a book of my poetry. I have always wanted to be an author of some kind, but, at least in my opinion, I believe a poet is something far more complicated to be. An author has 300 pages to write a compelling novel. A poet often only has a few stanzas. Both are hard to accomplish, but I feel like poetry only has room for what is important. There is no room for rambling (then again sometimes I think poetry can sometimes be just that). 

Then something happened. My friend showed me this slam poet on YouTube that I feel in love with. His name was Anis Mojgani and he was performing his slam poem “Shake the Dust”. If you are someone who loves poetry and have not heard this poem or any of this poet’s work, I highly suggest that you look him up on YouTube. He is one of my greatest sources of inspiration. The way his words flowed and oozed into the microphone made me want to do something even greater with my poems. Most poems are meant to be seen and read. Slam poems, on the other hand, are crafted specifically to be spoken aloud. They are designed with pauses and rhythms and sounds meant to inspire and connect with the audience. I began writing my first slam poem one night when my boyfriend was at work. We live together and he has always been my hardest critic because he believes in me and wants me to succeed (not to mention he is kind of a genius). This time I really wanted to make him say “wow”. I really wanted to just make him dumbfounded. I wanted to  make his jaw drop. I wanted him to sit in silence for a few moments after the last word of my poem because silence means that you have touched someone enough to make them think. 

I ended up with a slam poem that even I was kind of surprised with. When I read it I felt like I was reading something important. I felt like it had the potential to be something big. I named it “My Eyes”. Since then I have been creating a lot of slam poems and have performed a lot of them to friends and family. I have been encouraged and urged a bunch of times now to enter a slam poetry contest, but my worst enemy are the nerves. Maybe one day I will enter. 

Finally, my boyfriend introduced me to an amazing rapper. Now, to be fair, I have always despised rap. All you hear on the radio is a bunch of rappers singing about some woman’s breasts or other highly inappropriate topics that should most definitely not be expelled here. We all know what I’m talking about. My boyfriend was never one for rap either. We are both folk and indie music lovers, but one day my boyfriend introduced me to a rapper named Yoni Wolf. Yoni Wolf and his brother created a two person band named “Why?” Yoni studied poetry in college but dropped out because he felt he had the tools to be what he already wanted to be (and he did). He is an amazing rapper whose lyrics are beautiful and revolutionary. His technique is awesome and his flow runs smoothly because of this technique. Needless to say, my boyfriend and I now create poetic raps and perform them in rap circles with our friends. I really enjoy it.

Over my years of writing and performing poetry, I have been working on my English SE major. To be honest, I just want to be a poet, but there is no guarantee that that profession has to offer me. I chose to teach english because the only thing that I can think I would be good at is teaching english. I love literature and analyzing literature. I love writing. I love reading in general. Most importantly, however, I think that English teachers have one of the most amazing and most important jobs in the world. It is in English and in school that students are given the tools they need to be what they want. I want to teach. I want to inspire them to find their own truths and their own passions. I want to give them the means to express these truths. I know not every student will be an English wiz. I know not every student even wants to be sitting in school at all, but every student wants to be inspired. Every student just needs a little push. Every student needs a J.D. Salinger, an Anis Mojgani, or a Yoni Wolf, and I want to be that person.