To Read, or Not to Read

by Stella Malodi

That is the question. The answer is forty-two. The poems are... interesting. The author is rather odd. The people most likely to enjoy this are mice, nargles, and fellow Harry Potter fans. The summary is excessively dramatic. The decision is yours.

1. Introduction

Introduction

A number of years ago, my creative writing teacher came up with an... interesting idea for the poetry section in her class. Specifically, she gave us packets detailing the format of various kinds of poetry and instructions to write our own poem for each type listed. This was an excellent idea, overall, with only one problem: they were written for students learning about poetry for the first time, which I believe usually occurs by the age of eight. Needless to say, our teenage pride was slightly wounded; we were skeptical at best. We sat there, staring at our respective cartoon-filled packets, when I had what I considered a brilliant idea for my own project.

I was going to write my poems- all forty-two of them- based, in some way, on Harry Potter. It made the project much more enjoyable, and I was happy that I was able to do it, even if I spent more time than I'd like to admit rolling my eyes at that ridiculous packet. Somehow, it completely slipped my mind that publishing them as fanfiction was a possibility until I stumbled across them recently.

A great number of these poems are silly; most of them are very short; some of them are, I like to think, at least a little insightful; and all of them relate to the plot, characters, or world of Harry Potter.

Obviously, I've already written all of them. However, I would like feedback, if any are willing to give it. In order to get any feedback, people have to actually look at this, and that is best accomplished by posting gradually. I plan to update daily; with forty-two poems, this will still take over a month. If the poem I am posting is ridiculously short (at least one of them is only two lines), I will likely post two poems in one 'chapter.' I hope that people read and enjoy this; I certainly had fun writing it.

Side note: I don't have the packet anymore, but all of the poems had been typed up on my computer, which is why I still have them. The upside is that I don't have that ridiculous packet anymore. The downside is that the aforementioned ridiculous packet contained the names of all the different kinds of poetry, and I don't remember them off the top of my head. This is, I think, understandable given how long ago it was and my lack of interest in poetry since that time.