At the end of December, Hannah Stephenson wrote a post called “Things I Have Accidentally Learned About While Writing Poems.” I decided to keep track of the knowledge I picked up as I generated poems throughout the month. So without further ado, this is what my poems taught me:
- There are five species of pine trees in Texas: Loblolly pine, Longleaf pine, Ponderosa pine, Shortleaf pine, and Slash pine
- I learned about airglow, a phenomena in which light emissions are caused by chemical reactions in the Earth’s atmosphere.
- Given the proper funds, you could buy a bottle of rum for $54,000, whisky for $195,000, vodka for $1.6 million, tequila for $1.5 million, or champagne for $1.9 million.
- I learned how to respond to a sneeze in a number of languages.
Poetry and Practice 