Sharing your poem in class is risky because it’s personal. That’s what makes it land.

A poem names what you actually think, in your own words, which exposes more than an essay ever could. There is no topic to hide behind. That is the risk and it is also the mechanism, because the specific personal detail is exactly what makes anyone in the room feel something. Writing that nobody else could have written is the only kind that lands.

Read it as written rather than softening it on the way out of your mouth. Expect a quiet room afterward, which usually means it worked rather than the opposite.