If you are like me you have never been able to understand poetry, and every time you had to read it you died a little bit inside. I have decided to challenge myself and I signed up for a poetry class, I told myself to go in with an open mind and try to understand poetry in a way that I never could before. And let me tell you, it has completely opened my eyes and changed my perspective on poetry.
In other parts of our world, poetry is still so valued, and poets are looked up to and admired. But here in America, we have lost touch with the power of the written word. It is said that every creature makes a sound, and the sound humans make is poetry. When I first heard this, I just nudged it off because I thought it was kind of a weird thing to say. But the more I thought about it, the more it really made sense to me. Music is poetry, spoken language is poetry, and the written word is poetry.
Poetry is a way to express our untold thoughts and feelings in a way that we can't describe otherwise. Poetry helps people get through the hard times, and live their best lives through the best times. We turn to poetry through it all, and we need to appreciate it the way we used to, the way other parts of the world still do.
When I was younger, I couldn't understand poetry to save my life, it made me so angry that I couldn't get the message it was trying to portray. Therefore, I decided to just do away with poetry since I didn't get it anyways. But as I was trying to figure out what classes to sign up for in the first semester of my sophomore year in college, I decided to challenge myself and take a poetry class. It was honestly one of the best decisions I could have made for myself.
I went into the class kind of nervous that I still would not understand it and that I would fail the class, setting myself back 3 credits. Now I actually understand poetry, of course not every single poem I read, but for the most part, I can actually read a poem and take a message away from it and feel the emotions behind it. I have discovered that poetry is such a powerful thing and with so few words, it can say so much.
Of course not everyone can go out and take a poetry class, but if you can do it then I would suggest that you do. Otherwise, try to just read some poems and really find some you love and can get into and draw messages out of, ones that really speak to you. Poetry has taken my idea of literature and writing to a whole new level and opened my eyes to the sound we make as humans.
