I used to be really into writing. I used to be a good speller, too, although you couldn’t tell these days.
In high school I took all the english and writing classes. After that, I didn’t concentrate on it so much. But I happened into a poetry 101 style course in one of my electives in college.
One thing I’ve discovered about writing–from a good writer–is that they are striving for poetry in whatever form of writing they are currently consumed with. Novel, text, sentence, quotation, treatise, song, fiction, non-fiction, all of these the best authors will attempt to fuse with the stylings of poetry.
Most poetry, I’ve found, are actually other forms of writing (expository, allegory, etc.) but they’re simply written in a highly compressed form. Poetry is, at its heart, the concentration of the language in order to retain only the most potent and relevant words. Techies would call it compression.
The best poets concentrate words so well that just a few lines can be read as a full-on essay. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ode to a Skylark is one example. When understood in this way, Ode blooms with ideas and with striking similarities to how we write essays.
Another form of writing is what I call the self quote and I’ve only recently come to realize that its attraction is its poetry.
Many famous people are quoted. They are most often quoted from within a body of immediate context. Meaning they were giving a speech or were writing a book and a quotation has been pulled out.
The self quote, on the other hand, is a stand-alone writing. It has no body of context to draw on. It took me years to understand why I liked writing them. The reason, I’ve come to believe, is because I am writing poetry. The premise is similar. Concentrate a big thought into something bite-size, strategically writing in or leaving open thoughts that expand and support the main thrust.
See my own ‘Personal Thoughts‘ page for examples of how poetic devices are integrated with self quotes.