A Blog Post by Sophie Allen
In college, it gets easier and easier to narrow down your area of study until you’re just taking the courses that interest you and are pertinent to your major. I thought this would mean taking classes on writing, writing, and more writing, interspersed with occasional reading. While all those pursuits are useful and valid, I find myself writing pieces that don’t feel right and don’t feel like mine.
For context: I love trivia. I have a great memory for useless information, words that look good on a page and feel good coming out of my mouth, and historical tidbits to bring up if a conversation stalls. If I have a choice, my writing is always as precise as I can make it. I research extensively, even if I just plan to reference something in passing. In my poetry, I’ve made use of a lifelong fascination with Greek mythology, and if I write about the human body, it will always be anatomically accurate.
So it’s certainly worthwhile and useful to take classes about writing and how to do it well, but sometimes, it’s better to learn about something else and let that inspire your work. I’m struck by inspiration for my strongest work in non-creative writing settings. I found out that poetry could be about whatever I wanted and I ran with it. Most of my writing is autobiographical, but I love reading highly specific poems about things that might not always be considered poetic. Take “It’s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All of Those People Were Going to Die” by Hanif Abdurraqib! Is it really about Nikola Tesla? I have no idea, but I love it! What a great title! What a fascinating way to talk about love and death and Tesla! Abdurraqib is a great example of a poet who brings his knowledge of other areas to poetry to great effect, and oh man, I could write a whole blog post about it, but suffice it to say his writing is loaded with highly specific content that makes it that much greater.
Another great example is one of my favorite poems of all time, “Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara. It doesn’t matter that the poem isn’t really about art, but mentioning it enriches the piece immeasurably. I didn’t know what the Rembrandt painting the Polish Rider was before reading the poem, but I’ve walked past the Frick Collection in New York City a couple of times since, and it always makes me think of O’Hara.
The places I’ve been and the things I’ve learned impact my writing significantly, and the more I know, the more interesting my writing can be. I have a friend who writes gorgeous poems whose descriptions of plants are always scientifically accurate, and another who has travelled so much through the Midwest that every city she describes becomes its own vivid, realistic world. I haven’t spent much time in the Midwest, but I’ve written poetry about New Orleans, New York, and Dublin. I plan to write more.
The point I’m trying to make is that all that stuff they tell you in high school about being well-rounded is true. I want to learn everything I can, both for learning’s sake and for how it can add to my writing. I can write about the process of glass shattering when a projectile hits it, or the things you can use instead of a hammer if you can’t find one when you need it, or how to say “I’m sorry” in five languages. Giving it form and making it technically proper might require a writing course, but there are so many amazing things in the world and I plan to write about as many of them as I can, however I can.
Sophie Allen is an English major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is an Opinion/Editorial columnist at the Daily Collegian, the independent student newspaper at UMass. In her spare time, she enjoys reading murder mysteries and writing poetry. In the future, Sophie hopes to write for late-night television.