I have always loved prose, but I also have a place in my heart for poetry. It generally takes me a while to fall in love with a poem, though. I have to read it over and over, saturate myself in it before I can fully realize its beauty. Sometimes I have to separate myself from a poem for a while and come back to it. Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” was like that for me. I read it for class and just could not connect to it. In fact, I was under the (probably false) notion that the romantic period was not for me. Then, last summer, I rediscovered “Ode to a Nightingale” while on a Benedict Cumberbatch binge. (I think I was assembling an introduction to his work for a friend.) A recording of him reading it is on YouTube. I had listened to the recording in an attempt to understand it for class, so he wasn’t the reason why, but suddenly, I connected to it. I realized that it is a strikingly beautiful poem with a deep emotional well. By the end of the week I had practically memorized it.

Clearly, I don’t always connect to poetry and when I do, it's usually due to repeated exposure to it. In fact, one of the only poets whose work I immediately fell in love with is e. e. cummings. (For the uninitiated, there is contention regarding the capitalization of his name. He used proper capitalization when he signed things, but he is published mainly with lower case.) I have by no means exhausted the store of poets, and I can’t imagine I will, but thus far he is my favorite of them all.

I feel like this is an unpopular opinion. Many people dislike his work because it is a bit abstract and can be difficult to understand. It is not always constructed with linear logic. Honestly, that is precisely the reason why I love it. You often have to speak it and feel the syntax in your mouth in order to fully comprehend it. It is a sensual experience.

The way in which cummings’s poems are worded strike a place deep inside of me. I like the way they play with language and syntax and some of them speak emotional truth that could be my own. For example, “since feeling is first/ who pays any attention/ to the syntax of things/ will never wholly kiss you” (lines 1-4). I like to think about this line because it suggests that you cannot be fully present in a moment if you are dissecting it or trying to make a moment.

Another one of my favorite poems is about “maggie and milly and molly and may” who go to play on a beach (line 1). They all find things. Notably, may finds “a smooth round stone / as small as the world and as large as alone” (lines 9-10). The last lines of this poem are possibly my favorite in all of poetry: “For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it’s always ourselves we find in the sea” (lines 11-12).

If you are interested in poetry, you should give e. e. cummings a chance. Even if he is not what you’re used to and even if you have to try harder to understand what his poems are trying to say, it is possible that his poems will speak to you or strike chords for you. In my experience, that’s what makes reading poetry worth it—finding things that help color in the picture of who you are.