Splatter...Poem?

I have only recently begun experimenting with the placement of words on the page, and, to my surprise, I’m really getting into it. I took a lot of Creative Writing classes in high-school, so I learned early on that someone makes every line break intentional; all these separations add tension and emotion to a poem in different ways, and they all aim to affect the reader emotionally. Even so, I never realized the same can be true for the specific ways in which writers place their words on the page. Ever since I took Introduction to Poetry last semester, I have started experimenting with the idea here and there, but never have I been quite as radical with my arrangement as I was while writing my poem for this week’s workshop. The folks that were in my workshop group the week before last know that the spacing arrangement of my poem entitled “Cassandra” was a freak accident of Microsoft Word, and yet, before they realized this, the spacing was what they all seemed to be most impressed with. That incident has really inspired me to go to the next step with word arrangement, and take it to a whole new level of creativity. My poem for this week is called “Adolescence,” and I am absolutely thrilled with how it worked out visually. The piece has words sprawled out everywhere, some based on the same natural breaks I would have applied otherwise, and a few separations that only sprinkling words here and there on a page can really inspire. Such experimentation made “Adolescence” more interactive in that it is visually engaging in addition to its literary strengths. I do have to say, though, that I’m also pretty happy with the literary quality of my poem, but we’ll see what you all think of that Tuesday, I suppose!