If there was something I never understood in school when I was younger, it was poetry. For such an avid book reader, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why people liked this dense choppy style of writing. (My clear love of reading is shown in my cover photo of my bookmark and cat.) I often glazed over meaning in poems, reading them too quickly to truly comprehend. I worked diligently for many years to avoid poetry at every cost.
In high school, I tried to expand my close-mindedness and understand what poetry was all about. Poems take time and patience, and I had little of both as a child. Learning about the literary styles and elements that make up a poem took great concentration on my part, but I was finally starting to see what so many people raved about.
The big turning point for me was finding Walt Whitman’s book of poetry and prose, Leaves of Grass, at a garage sale. I had never owned a book containing poetry before and it was only a dollar at my neighbor’s garage sale. I decided to read a poem every night to give me something to ponder before I fell asleep.
What I wasn’t expecting was to lie awake thinking about the simply jubilant spirit found in Whitman’s writing. The poems describe the triumph and beauty of America in a way that only a poem could. To the great surprise of my elementary school self, Leaves of Grass quickly became one of my favorite works of literature. I realized that things like similes, metaphors, and even the dreaded extended metaphor actually can be sort of cool and thought provoking. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that trying new things, even things you thought you hated, is an important part of growth and can lead to new paths you never thought of.