A common question asked by many students and even adults is, what is the point of reading poetry? At first, I was also myself this question as I found poetry was quite boring for me then, I was used to novels and books that were designed for enjoyment, not to say that poems are not “fun” to read, but at my age, most people don’t have a reason to read poetry. I would say most people are introduced to this field of literacy in school and that if the education system did not require us to read this worded jigsaws then the topic would surely die out. However, no matter how boring the subject is, we’ve all heard of famous poets from William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson etc… but how is this possible if the topic is regarded as ‘useless’. People might argue this is because it is forced upon us by adults and that over the years it has been ingrained into our minds but I believe there’s much more to it.
Poetry is heavily misunderstood as the superficial point of view state that poems are too hard to decipher and take too much time when the poet could easily produce the same results with simpler words. People see poetry as frustrating because they don’t know if they are reading it right or that what they understand is correct. Another argument is that poetry useless in everyday life like most of the work you do at school when you get a real job when are you going to use these ‘skills’. I also believe the education system has a great influence on what people believe poetry to be, take this poem written by Billy Collins, he writes about how we are made to learn these pieces to the point where it seems like a dull routine.
However, to rebut these false accusations upon poetry, let me clear up some things. The reason poetry is hard to understand is that this form of writing started many years ago and it was probably common to write in this form, the reason modern poetry does not move to simpler language is that it takes the beauty away from poetry. This brings me to my second point, poetry does not have a correct or incorrect answer like what we are used to, it is what you perceive and understand of it as most people “… begin beating it with a hose to fund out what it really means.” However, this is not the proper way to understand poetry just because you do not understand it the first time, there is nothing holding you back from reading it a second time. This is why I am blaming the education system as poetry was not meant for study, it was supposed to be a hobby like reading a book or playing sports but now as it has been negatively connotated people always believe that it is pointless, however, movies are what you watch when you go out with friends to have fun, but as soon as it is studied on it instantly becomes a bore. Reading a poem is always related to work as if you presented a student with a piece of poetry they would instantly, “tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it” meaning that their first instinct would be to find its meaning and not think of it as a regular book.
People who do surpass this mindset have often said great things about poetry. The mind becomes soothed and when reading a poem people can be lost in time just like reading a book. Poetry survives because of the people reading it, how they perceive and bring the stories to life, that is the beauty of poetry.
People might argue that why not read a book instead of a poem if they both imbue the same qualities. Poetry can convey emotion in a much more grand way than novels, it was a way for people to translate intangible emotions onto paper, this results in the words being written down becoming much more powerful.
Another reason why poetry is very misunderstood as most people do not know that poetry heavily relates to music. Music is widely accepted and is the norm nowadays with many genres and people can listen to, to suit their taste. This can also be related to poetry as their are many different genres of poetry people can enjoy, in fact poetry offers the same as music. They both convey emotion, use the same skill to compose/create and both require creativity.
Bibliography:
Ha, T. (2014). What happens when we read poetry?. [online] ideas.ted.com. Available at: https://ideas.ted.com/what-happens-when-we-read-poetry/ [Accessed 20 Oct. 2019].
Psychology Today. (2019). Iain Thomas: Why Read Poetry?. [online] Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/one-true-thing/201710/iain-thomas-why-read-poetry [Accessed 20 Oct. 2019].
Boston Review. (2013). The Difference Between Poetry and Song Lyrics. [online] Available at: http://bostonreview.net/forum/poetry-brink/difference-between-poetry-and-song-lyrics [Accessed 20 Oct. 2019].
Case.edu. (2019). [online] Available at: https://case.edu/firstyear/sites/case.edu.firstyear/files/2018-08/Why%20Read%20Poetry_818.pdf [Accessed 20 Oct. 2019].
