My best friend has me thinking about poetry: why it's there, what it's good for, why we go through 50,000 complicated ways to express ourselves, who's job it is to interpret it, and how poetry gets misrepresented in the high school setting. My best friend Moniker, as I like to call her, doesn't like poetry much. Actually, she rather likes poetry, but gets frustrated and discouraged from reading a poem. A lot of this frustration she learned in high school. In high school in literature and poetry, it's vital to expose the students to literature which might be above their level of understanding (how else will they be challenged?) and tell them what it means because you don't have all quarter to figure out what it means naturally. This crevice between "what they tell me it means" and "what I understand of it" is where my dear friend Moniker is stuck. She also doesn't write poetry because poetry forms were foisted upon her and they didn't click with her at all. So she got frustrated and stopped. The thing is, she's not the only one who has this story. This is heartbreaking to me. I know that I sometimes form weird attachments and think too hard about things, but this is heartbreaking. Education shouldn't make people frustrated or afraid of education. It should broaden horizons. I feel like everyone leaving high school, even if they didn't enjoy everything they read, should be able to enjoy novels and poetry and short story. Along with being taught poetry forms, they should be taught that forms are there to provide a richer experience. Actually, that's what most "boring stuff" in literature is. When I understand the rules of grammar, when I understand how a metaphor works, when I understand narrative structure, when I understand poetry forms, it should not only better my philosophical, historical, and literary understanding, but enrich my experience with literature overall.
For example, if I listen to Les Miserables the musical, there is a distinct possibility that I will cry. I think the story of redemption is beautifully told through song, and sometimes Eponine's whiny mezzo can break through my heart. However, if I read the abridged version of the book, I will understand the deeper connections between the characters and the full consequence of the sacrifices that the dying made and see the nobility of a striving France. Then, when I listen again to Les Mis, I will mourn all the more because the characters are closer to my heart. However, if I read the unabridged version, and see fully the connection to the cosmos and to God, and mostly read the 100 page description of the sewer system and the 100 pages on the history of France, then I will see clearly. I will see the deep, beautiful characters and the deals they have made with God and the stars. I will see the staggering love of Jean Valjean, and the beauty of France's revolts. Then, when I listen to Les Mis, I will bawl like a baby. Every layer of knowledge only deepens my understanding and experience. Yes, I am fed in an educative sort of way. Now I know about French Literature, and the history of France, and the literary devices, and the Parisian sewer system (actually kind of interesting in a macro sense), but even more importantly I understand grace, redemption, and sacrifice so much more.
This is the purpose of poetry. The forms and the devices and the words are there to make it memorable, to add layers and levels of meaning and understanding from historical to the personal. But when you strip a poem down, they are just little fragments of soul that have bared themselves to the world in a desperate attempt to be truly loved. So they clothe themselves in words to make themselves more meaningful. Because no one will like "there was this one time that I missed my gf Lenore and it haunted me and I was sad but also desperate and a little bipolar," but they will read The Raven.
See? I've set aside my soapbox. If I am wrong, then I am, well, misdirected. But I come from a good place. Though if I had taken the Poetry Theory class and maybe some education courses then I would be more accurate.
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