The Simple Beauty of Poetry

Poetry to me means something that I can go to in order escape the present and become engulfed into a fantasy. A fantasy of either the past, present or future. It doesn’t necessarily have to be dramatic, but as long as it has meaning to ME, then I consider it a good poem. I enjoy poems consisting of love, life struggles, or inspiration. Because those topics are something I can relate to and I can actually feel the authors meaning. I like to become involved within the poem and experience the emotions that the author was trying to make the reader feel. Sometimes, I read poems and think the complete opposite thing of what the author might have been suggesting. That is the pure beauty of literature and writing. You can go on and on without many boundaries, besides the edge of the white paper on which you are writing on. Even if I do find unintentional meanings within the poem, I still wonder on what the author was really trying to get across. Perhaps the writer was merely writing just for the fun of it? Perhaps that is a way of expressing their own true feelings and thoughts?

I love the way poetry lets me get involved within the simple and small portion of the page. I can connect words with other ones in the poem and try to derive some type of a meaning. One connection leads to another and this lets me be free and write down any thought that I might be feeling. I love that simple act of reading that lets me feel a whole lot of emotions, based on what I am reading. That’s the beauty. I can read a poem each day to go along with my mood. Or sometimes I can read a poem in hopes of changing my mood from one to another. Once the poem changes me, I feel different. But with irony, I do not change the poem. The poem always stays the same and does not change. It’s funny how just a bunch of words on a page can provide so much feeling and completely change a person. Meanwhile the page is never affected, unless you burn it. But I’m sure these days there’s always a copy somewhere online or in another million books.

I am enjoying this unit of AP Lit. There’s really no wrong or right answer when you analyze a poem, as long as you have your evidence to support what you’re saying.