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What is this... Prose, you speak of?
I've always been a big poet. Starting from about 8th grade, I think I found a way to show myself how I felt by letting thoughts flow freely onto paper and it clicked. Since then I've found ways to grow concerning how I write, what I write about, and with practice, a more extensive vocabulary has come with this hobby. A subset of this site is Hidden Agendas, a website run entirely for the purpose of giving a voice to other poets out there and the works they produce.
Poetry is a beautiful thing because it can be as simple as jotting down a few lines of abstract thought, or it can be a symphony composed with the highest sense of perception, displayed gloriously via words placed in positions where speaking them can in a sense, mimic a beautiful song. Poetry is not happy, poetry is not sad, nor depressing. Instead poetry is the expression of it's creator's greatest emotions, described in a fashion that can be delivered to another set of ears or eyes.
Punctuation is extremely important in poetry, it can show the reader where to halt, where to continue, where to pause, and then finish. If you take an english course or composition course of some type you'll more than likely encounter a professor that will give you poetry to read and interpret or define in some sense. Reading many types and many different styles of poetry is what shows the beauty of it. Just by browsing Hidden Agendas, you can see the artwork of some very amateur poets, alongside with those that have been so bold as to write and publish their own poetry. The styles vary so much it's amazing to think of how this comes to be, how the thought, comes to play in the sentence, that defines the line, that will either rhyme with the next, or flow freely until it's ended.
I'm a fan (and you can see this from my writing), of very readable blocks of text, I usually write two lines that rhyme, space, and then repeat. Sometimes I will go with a four-block structure, where each line will be a little longer than my usual style and so I break it in half, forming a line broken in two, where the last word or set of words, rhyme with the next ending line. It's a very traditional format, I've ventured down the freeverse path a few times, and found it too unstructured for my liking. Ironically, these poems were the truest to me, as they didn't need to be malformed to rhyme with anything, but instead were produced from emotion, to display emotion. It's easy to see why this style is so popular and used so often.
There's no right or wrong way with writing poetry, unless it's mine, because then it's much better than yours  . Your poetry is just that, yours. It's entirely personal, and unfortunately, if you cannot read it, sometimes it's hard to see how it was written - a soft or harsh tone, sad or joyous? This can make some great poetry often dull or too difficult to read, but worry not, it's great that there is a way to get it out there, for others to see.
A few months ago I was emailed by a 9th grader that wanted to use one of my poems for his english class. I remember a similar assignment that we had when we studied various poets and poems, and I don't think I'd ever felt as vindicated as I did right then. Maybe he was surfing the web just looking for poems to mark as his own and if anything, had his own greedy motives for asking to use it, but the idea that someone would want to choose one of mine? That's one of the greatest things about writing poetry, when someone understands what you mean and it clicks with them, you've conveyed feelings and thoughts that you might never have been able to if left solely to speech.
If you're interested, here are some of my latest submissions to Hidden Agendas:
The Proposal
The Perfect Storm
To both my Valentines
At only 4 months old...
I'm just not sure
And just because I love random stuff, some random poems:
A wishful, silent absence
Fleeting sense of sanity
Finding You
Happy Birthday
Yesterday I dreamed of nothing, and you were there
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