(Posted November 30, 2016)

""""""""""""""""" A Juniata student reads one if her poems. Q
Photo by Anisah Pasquale '19
""""""""""""""""" A Juniata student reads one if her poems. Q
Photo by Anisah Pasquale '19

On Tuesday, Professor Peter Goldstein’s Poetry Writing Course (EN 303) read some of their poems to an overflow audience. The students chose a variety of poems from throughout the year with a variety of prompts and styles. There were 12 students who each read three poems, with the exception of one person who read just one poem.

The poems spanned from serious topics such as sexual assault and consent to silly topics like hometowns. As with any poetry reading, love and angst were major topics of interest.

Many of the students utilized a narrative style, others wrote descriptive poetry, and only one featured a rhyme scheme. One student, Suzanne Jlelaty, a senior from Astoria, N.Y., featured alliteration, or the use of words that start with the same letter directly after each other.

Some of the prompts the students used included: the creation of a new word, the use of both simile and metaphor in a single poem, and a memory.

The poems titles included: “Man Takes What Man Wants,” “Marlboro Man,” “Desert Goddess,” “She Doesn’t Know,” “Works of Art” and “Wonderstumps.”

One of the students from the class, Lily Formosa, a sophomore from Caraoplois, Pa., read three poems, though her favorite was “Remembering Xela,” a reflective piece about her time in Guatemala. Her inspiration was, “the graveyard in Zone 1, in Xela. I have this picture of a crumbled pathway all these brightly colored mausoleums and graves. There was a volcano in the background that had just recently erupted the day before so the lava and ash were still visible.”

Formosa has always been interested in poetry, using it as an escape during middle school when she was experiencing depression during the time of her parent’s divorce, and wrote poems on scrap pieces of paper. She wrote more poems throughout high school, some of which she still has.

EN 303 Poetry Writing is a class that runs only in the fall semester and is open to all students who hold sophomore standing or higher and have taken EN 109 or 110.

Isabella Bennett, Juniata College Online Journalist 2020~

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