Learning To Love Poetry

What Poetry Does For Us

The news of poetry and Amanda Gorman and her inaugural poem this week reminded us to be aware of poetry. Too often we don’t give poetry a second thought. It hasn’t really found its place in our modern Western culture. Lots of us know poetry exists, but don’t really give it much more thought than that.

Many of us remember the tortured essays we had to write for English classes in high school and trying desperately to come up with some vaguely original analysis, something that did not sound like regurgitating the copious analysis we had already done in class. As you read the poem assigned, you threw your head in your hands and whined “I don’t know what it means”, then went on to grasp desperately at anything you might have imagined it could possibly mean.

The tortures of those English classes put so many of us off the whole idea of poetry, however, every now and then, a poet sneaks into our mainstream consciousness. Maybe someone like Maya Angelou or Jack Kerouac or Ezra Pound. But think deeper into it, some of the work you know and love might be poetry in disguise, how about Bob Dylan or Dr. Seuss or John Lithgow.

If you can think of these works as poetry you can let go of some of the agonies from English class, and begin to see poetry as something interesting. But you ask why one might read poetry. When we read a novel it’s a story that begins in the beginning and ends when all the action wraps up, but a poem baffles us because we don’t quite know how to take it. What if we look at it from another angle? What if instead, it’s a painting, maybe a bit of an abstract painting? When you see a painting you stand in front of it and try to figure it out. What if he did this with the poem?

A writer for the Odyssey website share some ideas about why reading poetry is valuable.

1. It makes you think.
2. It makes you feel.
3. It gives you a different perspective on life.
4. You can read it over and over.
5. You can write your own poems.

My personal favorite is reason number 3. However, that different perspective can’t be perceived without experiencing reasons 1 and 2 and even reason 4. I like the idea of finding a different perspective on life because it helps us develop compassion, understanding, and seeing something from another person’s point of view. Reason 5 can get those ideas outside ourselves. We all get a bit arrogant sometimes about our way of thinking and stepping outside that can bring us some empathy and tolerance.

Last week we all watched Amanda Gorman recite her inaugural poem, reminding our collective consciousness poetry is there for us and her poem put words to our collective consciousness’s distress and hope.

Tell me about a part of her poem that brought you some understanding of others’ feelings? Can you pick one line that feels like a revelation to you? What about a line that feels like it strikes that you’re soul?