Show and Tell: Does a Poetic Essay Stand Out?

Should college application essays be written straight forward or poetically/creative?

I was asked to answer this question on the website Quora.com

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I cannot give you an either or response to your question,

In part because I have been in education for over thirty years,

And during that time I have read untold thousands of essays.

The vast majority of applicants submit stolid prose not poetry,

not even creative non-fiction, partly perhaps because

They do not trust themselves to sing with a unique voice.

Writing teachers’ commandments include: Find your voice,

An imperative that, to me at least, raises a question

About the nature of being that I find paradoxical because

It assumes that we, each of us, have, over hours, days and years

A singular voice, a fated or genetic epic, unchanging poetry

That gets fixed, newly neutered, into sterile essays.

It is unfortunate that Montaigne’s word for attempts, essays

Has become something more solid and stolid, a singular voice

Instead of the many minded approach of Homeric poetry,

The epics that through myriad heroes and gods question

The way we do and undo our natures over the years

Of experience, the effects that have no following because.

You may well have given up on my attempts here because

I seem to have lost Ariadne’s thread back to the essays

That many students think will determine the four years

They will spend among ivy walls listening to the voice

Of profs who can answer a seemingly overwhelming question

About the return on investment of bloodless things like poetry.

Maybe malt or Morgan or Goldman can justify lives better than poetry

Or maybe we’d be better off with the sinning Python’s code because

Its sibilant tongue can, with enough data, answer any question

About our acts, past or future, the present thesis of AI essays

That pass the Turing test, that make the Muses’ inspired voice

A canting ken for museums to exhibit during our kids’ formative years.

Should you try to stand out by writing in a way that often takes years

To learn? Do you have a background that makes the choice of poetry

A worthwhile risk? Can you cloth yourself with a metamorphic voice?

Do you think that shape shifting sentences will help you because

You have taken the road less travelled? Are your tell it slant essays

Enough to turn the tide and place your place beyond any question?

The search for a winning voice, if you wait a few years,

Will not be a question that matters much--poetry

makes nothing happen in politics or in essays.

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I guess I should point out that the above answer is a Sestina, a fairly arcane poetic form. Did you notice it? Does this make the answer better, more creative? Maybe, maybe not. If you don't have experience writing sestinas or other poetic forms, then trying to be too creative can backfire. It can seem mannered or gimmicky or just plain bad. It's risky. I have long advocated for students to take calculated risks on essays but this applies to those who already have some writing talent.

Note: Each stanza quotes some famous poem or trope. A Sestina is a deliberately baroque form that, if you did not notice it,  is, supposedly,  successful. I am not so sure, but it was fun to write.
References to poems and poets include: Homer, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, T.S Eliot, and Ovid.

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Sestina

The patterns of word repetition are as follows, with each number representing the final word of a line, and each row of numbers representing a stanza:

1 2 3 4 5 6

6 1 5 2 4 3

3 6 4 1 2 5

5 3 2 6 1 4

4 5 1 3 6 2

2 4 6 5 3 1

(6 2) (1 4) (5 3)

Sestina : Glossary Term : Learning Lab : The Poetry Foundation