When I was a child, I loved poetry. My siblings and I would read Shel Silverstein, and Dr. Suess to one another, giggling at the silly words and wild antics of the characters. It never really crossed my mind that poetry was so different from prose, they were both just different ways of imparting emotions or a narrative onto a reader. Once I got to fourth grade, I started to formally learn about poetry. We started to explore different structured poetry styles and had to compile our own poetry anthology. This was the beginning of my shift in attitude towards poetry. For me these orderly, systematic styles seemed a far cry from the creativity of the poetry of my younger years. As school continued, my dislike of poetry increased. We always read the same poets again and again, and deconstructed the poetry until it was no longer beautiful. We tore it down to the studs, removing the emotion and depth of thought. My teachers always seemed to advocate for the meaning that they saw in the poem; so for a long time I thought that was the only way to read poetry: to search for a singular meaning. So for all of high school I thought I hated poetry, but it's only now that I realize that I hated the way I was taught to treat poetry. Now that I have reverted to my childlike wonder concerning poetry, I am starting to rediscover my love of poetry.
There are probably thousands of other students that like me, who had their enjoyment of poetry robbed of them due to the way they were taught it in school. We were taught to dissect and disassemble, to unpack a singular meaning, and in the process destroy the beauty. For a lot of people, if the way they were introduced to poetry was changed, I think they would have more enjoyment of it. If instead of only seemingly classics, teachers added some contemporary poetry as well, then maybe more people would see the relate-ability and elegance of poetry.
Your post speaks to my soul! When preparing to read the poems for class, I approached them with utter dread and reluctance. These feelings came naturally, without pre-meditative thought or awareness on my end. In fact, at one point I even expressed my tangible discontent at "having to read these freaking poems for class," to a friend of mine. His response was not what I was expecting at all. Whereas I expected the empathetic, yet depth-less concurrence of a friend who agreed that poems suck, I was met with the remark "I thought you liked poetry?"
ReplyDeleteThis made me think... a lot. Eventually I realized that George was right. I DO like poetry, kind of. Like you, I loved reading poetry as a kid. Until I read your post though, I hadn't realized when or why that had changed. Now I see that it was not the reading of the poetry that I dreaded, but rather the intense analysis of it that my brain assumed would follow. Unfortunately, I have been conditioned to naturally believe that poetry=confusion rather than poetry=beauty. But this is not the case.
I actually really enjoy poetry. I enjoy the simultaneous simplistic and complex nature of it. I enjoy the way it sounds when it is spoken with passion and purpose. And I really enjoy writing it... most of the time. While I agree with you that "poetry" as a subject should be approached in a better manner throughout one's secondary education, I think it is also important for individuals to explore poetry by their lonesome. Through solitary reflection, one can truly glean the magnitude of the relaxed nature of poetry, as opposed to the analytical side of it.
Amara, I really like what you’re getting at here. I agree, so many of us have an appreciation for poetry as children that somehow gets lost along the way. My dislike of poetry, however, came from a different place than yours. From the sounds of it, I got lucky and had English teachers who really embraced delivering multiple interpretations of poetry. I enjoyed, to use your words, breaking it down to the studs and really trying to understand how a poem was able to evoke a certain emotion. For me, the beauty was lost in being forced to write poetry. Like most art, I believe that if you go looking for it you’re bound to get frustrated. I had English teachers say write a poem in AB rhyme scheme about someone important in your life by Friday. That’s just not how art works, and I was never proud of anything that I produced in these classes. No great song was ever written by someone saying, well now I’m going to write a song about heartbreak. They come about by having your heart broken, having no idea what to do, and using art as a medium to get through it.
ReplyDeleteTeachers would be much better served, as we are in this class, to show their students where poetic ideas come from, and methods they can use to channel this poetic energy. They should encourage their students to be creative, and find something that truly matters. I’ve yet to write a piece of poetry that I’m truly proud of, but in the moments that I’ve come close its been entirely unprompted. I may not have written anything in months, but I find myself compelled to write about something and it just flows out. I wish someone had taught my earlier that that’s how poetry works. Maybe then I would have been less frustrated trying to write a poem about starfish with the same vibrancy as Mary Oliver, and instead looked for my own muse.
Amara, I think the question is not why do so many people hate poetry, but rather, why do so many scientists and engineers (or likeminded individuals) hate poetry. As an engineer, I like exact, precise answers. I want to add 2 and 2 to make 4, and have the expectation that everyone else would get the same answer. Just as engineers hate unanswerable questions, we hate questions that have too many answers. To me, this is my frustration with poetry. I had very similar experiences in high school when teachers would advocate for a poetic perspective I didn’t agree with. Not only did I disagree with their interpretation, but I wanted mine to be correct. We are uncomfortable with the idea of many solutions, and I think poetry only aggravates this sentiment. Fortunately, I’ve come to appreciate poetry on a personal level, when it has not yet been contaminated by the opinions of others. Poetic stubbornness is tightly held.
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