Like clockwork, a poem is sent to my inbox at 6 am via the poem-a-day subscription at poets.org, and the circumstances in which I read this poem are constantly in motion. I assume this will happen when you've had a regular subscription for over three years, though I would dare to say it is not often considered.

I first typed in my old yahoo email as a senior in high school as a bet against a teacher of mine that I could find better poems for class. Then like any other person I was too lazy to discontinue the subscription even after I graduated and came to Purdue.

Let's address the elephant in the room: I don't read Petrarch, I had to read the Cliffnotes version of John Milton's Paradise Lost, and while John Donne's works make me smile, nod, hang them up in my room, I have never nailed down what precisely is being discussed or contended.

Reading lots of poems has never given me a leg up comprehending what Gertrude Stein was talking about, I have no clue what a "caesura" is or what someone means when they refer to the "meter", and to this day I'm certainly not the woman next to you at Harry's who says, "You know, there's this great quote by James Weldon Johnson that would fit perfectly in this situation." A poem a day equates to a mile wide and an inch deep understanding of poets and poetry.

I can also assure anyone reading that it does not get easier some days I'm too tired, too busy, or any other pitiful reason. Contemporary poems can be hard to follow, and sometimes pieces prior to 1850 I don't register as English; however, what each poem holds, and consequentially motivates me to keep opening that email, is a glimpse into the skull of another person in a space much smaller than a short story.

In poetry, it is required of the writer to take full advantage of the space allotted to them which opens the door to formatting, spacing, changing typefaces, where stress is placed, line breaks, rhythm, and so many others I never learned the names of. As I mentioned previously, terminology and poetic buzz words have always been a lost cause for me to pursue simply because I have yet to find the need for them.

Poetry consists of a conversation between the outside world, a person's mind, and language which must be carefully deployed in order to process the world into readable, usable data. Reality, experiences, and emotions are each complex tesseracts that are handed to mere humans without manuals or guidelines on what to do or how to act.

Over the years, no matter what poem I come across, I believe poetry is a person's most accessible method to marry the universe's entropy to the brain's need for bite-sized information. I will always return to it to try to put a label to an emotion or feeling, and to see the world through another person's lens. The world is a different escapade to every person, and with every reading I become a little more aware, a little more sensitive, and a little more connected to others.

For further reading on the difference between prose and poetry, this article by Martin Earl is a short read!