Organic Poetry: What It's Like To Be A Black Girl

Short Poetry Paper Organic poetry generally seems to be the most common type of poetry. To me, they are the easiest to come by, but aren’t always the easiest to understand simply because they are taken straight from random thoughts of the poet and jotted down on paper, a napkin, or any kind of canvas available to that poet. Although they don’t have much planning and are difficult to decipher, it is possible. When Patricia Smith wrote “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl (for Those of You Who Aren’t)” (854) she was simply telling us about her experiences in life as she grew up. She may not spell out everything she is saying, but expects the reader to pick up on it. This tendency is also carried out in “Surprise” (899) and “Summer Words
It is easy for someone to jot down their thoughts in story form and it be considered a poem. This is a great example of an Organic Poem simply because it comes from her heart. There is no specific formatting that Smith had to think about in order to write this. Naturally, she told her story without having to plan what she was going to say or how she was going to say it. There are parts in the story that possess word play such as, “…until your legs pop,” (line 12) where Smith had to ponder her diction, but it was not something she had to plan out ahead of time in order to create some kind of organization for the
It is a simple paragraph arrangement that is written as a story. Expecting her audience to understand who she is talking about when she mentions “He,” (Line 1) she doesn’t feel that it is necessary to explain to the reader who exactly “He” is. The way the poet decided to write this story was not preplanned, it is just a poem about a surprise party her husband or significant other had planned for her. The layout and execution of writing this is very much organic and is easy to understand. Poetry does not always have to be rhythmic or have some kind a pattern to it. The story comes straight from Kenyon’s mind as she pulls memories from it rather than planning everything she is going to write. Although “Summer Words…” is written as an organically, Sanchez thinks about the layout of her poem. The way she wrote it has some kind of meaning she wanted the readers to pick up on. There is no pattern to her writing, but it is very jumbled up and there is a section (Lines 14-22) that is completely indented. This is the only poem out of this group that has any kind of forethought put into it before the poet wrote it. It seems as if Sanchez wrote this poem like this to describe the mind of a heroin addict. They aren’t focused and this poem jumps around as if it is all over the