How To: Not Enjoy Poetry Heh... Personally, I dont like poetry..

[szupie 0]

Sorry, but I just can't stand poetry... I don't think that it's useless, I think that it has a purpose, and that is to irritate people who don't like it. People say that poetry is an art, which can be looked at at many different angles. Here's what my angle usually looks like.First, read the poem and find any rhymes at the end of the lines. If there are rhymes, that is a decent poem! If not... it sucks. Your teacher may say that the way the poet used this metaphor, simile or imagery is great. But is it possible that the poet just accidentally thought of it, wrote it down, but thought that it was bad? Then someone reads it in a different angle and thinks of a way to say that it's amazing. These twisted excuses usually requires some twisted thinking which in the end proves nothing. Teachers only force their students to think of ways to think that the poem is good by asking these questions: "Why did the author use this word instead of that one?" "Why did the author use this as a symbol?" "What did the word xxx actually mean the way the author use it?"Have you read those free verse poems? How can you write those? It's impossible to just write down what you're randomly thinking write now and call it a poem. That is, unless someone comes along and says, "Wow, this poem is beautiful! When you look at it this way, your mind gets stuffed with all these wonderful images and ideas!"Then, all you have to do is think of how bad the excuse you made up to appreciate the writing was, and think of the writing as a POEM. Then you'd think, whoa, I can't believe how bad poems can get... Anything can be a poem. Even the last sentence on my previous paragraph can get someone to think that I'm a great poet using imagery.Um... Sorry, I just had to write this post because I have recently read an essay on how to enjoy poetry. It was just too ridiculous to me that I had to write something against it.

[chiiyo 0]

Actually, as an ex-poet myself (haha I don't write anymore!), I used to ponder these questions. I didn't like it when my literature teacher would go, think about what the author was thinking when he wrote this, because from my own experience, I wasn't thinking anything nearly as deep when I wrote the word "in" in between like "drink" and "cockroach" or something, it's just you know, I wrote it there, because it sounded good, not because I wanted to emphasise the small feeling of the cockroach in a vast cup or something like that. (weird example, I know)My friend, who took literature all the way into university, told me something that made me just slightly more happy. Basically, poems, stories, lyrics, all these supposed literary works, are truly only literary works if someone else feels inspired and gets something out of the work. True, there are supposedly very good writers, like Shakespeare and Tennessee, who, for all that's they're worth, might actually really HAVE thought of all that intricate detail when they were writing, but for the rest of the crowd, their work is touted as good because it inspires something in the people who read it, who then spoil it (in my opinion) by taking the poem or story apart and analysing it bit by bit. And overinterpreting it. Which is why the elementary school way of teaching literature is flawed, in my opinion. In the end, if literary works are truly valued by the worth of it in the reader's mind, then what's the point of testing whether you can value the poem using a totally different set of values altogether? It just makes it meaningless. I find literature fascinating because often I'm inspired by what I read, but I HATED ABHORED literature class for the amount of dead-ness it inspired in me when I read.Anyway, give poetry a chance. Read it without pressure to analyse it or take it apart or interpret it, maybe you'd grow to like it. If not, at least you would have read a poem the TRUE way it should be read; with an open mind and heart.

[moonwitch1405241479 0]

Well, I write. Be it called poetry, random ramblings, prose... It doesn't matter to me. I don't write for the pleasure of others. I write for ME. This is fairly important to say that, writing for me personally is therapeutic. I can release emotions, feelings, thoughts, hurt, ... in words. My writings hardly ever rhyme, I don't fancy rhyme. As for how to enjoy poetry... you can't make yourself like it, you or like reading it (and then you'll still have preferences about which type) or you don't. It's that simple.When I read a poem, I do see things, or I feel a sentiment, but I also realize this may be very different from what the author intended with the words. You associate certain words, with other words or images through personal experience etc. I do have to agree with you, szupie, I HATE teachers going "what did ... intend with ..." You can't know this, you're not the author. I feel that analyzing poems like teachers want students to do in school, is wrong. You can't analyze words someone wrote to express something they felt. (I am not refering to the realistic poems - they don't make sense to me at all LOL - I can not see the beauty in describing the shape of a freezer). Anyhow, szupie, you may not enjoy poetry, someone else may. It's personal So you can like something someone else doesn't appreciate. It's what makes us unique.

[szupie 0]

Yeah, I can't bellieve you thought what I thought too. I might like poetry if it wasn't given to me from my teacher. But I certainly would not analyze it. People have different perspectives, and you don't know that the author is thinking the way you think he/she is thinking. That is why the Universe cannot be defined as real, as we all look at it differently, but we're all wrong because it's what we interpret from it, not the real image. I'm getting off topic here and not making sense.