Writing Poetry vs. Writing About Poetry

Writing Poetry and Writing About Poetry are two opposite endeavors.
Creating or Writing poetry demands that an author have some goal or theme in mind sparked by some creative urge to put into words some high emotion, meaningful situation, important historical fact etc. Then, some form is brought forth, perhaps an old established form like the sonnet or a free style or something completely different. The poet then must submerge into thier subconsious for words and ideas and ponder how to group them together in order to concretize or represent the powerful emotions that caused the action and satisfy the theme.
This is, as the Romantics called it, a synthesizing process using the categories and the imagination put into free play by the poet.
Writing About Poetry is the opposite, for it is an analyzing art. The student essayist tries their best to isolate one or several of the synthesizing aspects of a poem and argue a perspective such as why the author chose a certain form, words, etc. More advanced essay writers, or critics, are looking to see if there are any intended or unintended linguistic power codes, sublimations, gender constructs etc. They analyze by isolating, separating and abstracting chosen key components of a poem and try to make meaning from them.
Because even poets aren't always in full control of their subconscious, there can be fierce debates about the arguements made to support or deny an essayists or critics thesis or assertions. One thing is for sure, an argument must be clear, concise and to the point while the poem itself can be anything. The flip side is, though a poem can be any group of words, it must have a certain something for an essay writer or critic to take the time writing about!
Writing the limited amount of poetry that I have written only confirms what I knew about the pressures of creating a linguistic form that is worthy of attention and fun to listen to. In addition, having a bit more experience at writing about literature (but not really a whole lot) only confirms the fact that analyzing and making clear my conclusions and assertions are an exacting process and an art in its own right.
I am glad to have the option of doing both though, however painful a process both might be.
The main thing that I have learned is that whether one is synthesizing something new and creating a poem, or analyzing an existing poem posing an argument, practice makes perfect. Yes, it is a cliche, but in this case it is obvious.
Thus, it looks like creating poetry, using all kinds of creative tricks (like beginning with a rush of free form content to generate ideas!), will be just as valuable a classroom experience as laboring over concise arguments, honed to drive home an unanswerable thesis!