A Word About Poetry

Somewhere in your past there may have been a teacher that made you think, "Poetry is not for me." Who made you think - poetry is too hard, I don't understand it, it makes me feel stupid. That teacher was an idiot. Forget them. Poetry is the first language you learned. You were fluent in it before you spoke your first word. Poetry is the language of the heart (and I'm not just talking about love poems here). So it is natural and right that the brain will not always understand poetry.

Dive in. Read some poems, them read some more. Don't worry if you don't understand them. Keep going. It's like learning a foreign language: immerse yourself deeply enough and, miraculously, one day you'll understand what the waiter is saying.

Forget about "getting it." If the poem has meaning for you, if it reminds you of the time your Aunt Alice got drunk at your wedding and took off all her clothes, making you realize for the first time how sad and lonely she was, terrific! Even if the poem appears to be about flowers, it spoke to you, reminded you of your Aunt Alice and loneliness. All your responses, all your interpretations are valid. There is no "right" or "wrong" among poets - only among teachers and literary critics. Forget them!

If the poems that are considered great don't make your heart leap in recognition and say yes, forget them. Move on, read other poems until you find the ones that do. Poetry is the language we use to express the deepest, truest, scariest, most boring and most wonderful things about being human. You do understand poetry, you wouldn't be human if you didn't.