Poetry is an art form that expresses itself in far more ways than most people give it credit for. While most may assume that poetry is simply combining rhyming words together to create a pleasant sounding text, it actually is critical to bringing forth ideas that most would not even care for or notice. Just like any other form of art, there are many poorly written poems, but at the same time, there are many more poems that are excellent. Unfortunately, it seems that poorly written poems gain more attention from the public than the expertly constructed ones. This has steadily given poetry a generally poor name. Attempting in my class to construct poems, in my case, a sonnet, I can see how difficult it truly is to be a poet and have far more respect for the poetry masters who have written hundreds of poems in their lifetimes. Further relating to my class, it is often that I observe that poems that I assumed were fairly straightforward to analyze and understand the language are actually the most difficult poems to understand because every single word in them has been specifically chosen to represent an idea. The same reason goes for why short poems are actually the most difficult to analyze.
Even using all of our techniques for understanding poems such as looking for figurative language, symbolism, alliteration, stanza construction, etc, it is still up to us to determine what all of these things go together to create. To understand how they were used so that we can use these elements in our own writing, to improve for the future. One interesting aspect of the poems we analyze in class is that many were written hundreds of years ago, yet we are still able to read them, albeit with some difficulty, but read and understand them nonetheless. Words if used correctly have the power to influence people long after one has died. If the message behind those words is still valid and the way it is conveyed is logical, then it does not matter if the language is outdated. People still read and recite Shakespeare long after what even he assumed people would remember him for. In the end, that is what poetry is meant to do. To carry on people’s traditions, stories, customs, beliefs, ideas, and morals for generations and centuries to come. To end this reflection on poetry, I will refer to perhaps the ultimate example of a poem surpassing thousands of years of human history to still tell its tales. This is the Epic of Gilgamesh, commonly referred to as the first great work of poetry. Will Shakespeare’s sonnets and the other poems that we think of as important now last quite as long? Only time will tell. In the mean time, new poets can add their works to humanity’s pool of poetry so that others can learn, far into the future.
Even using all of our techniques for understanding poems such as looking for figurative language, symbolism, alliteration, stanza construction, etc, it is still up to us to determine what all of these things go together to create. To understand how they were used so that we can use these elements in our own writing, to improve for the future. One interesting aspect of the poems we analyze in class is that many were written hundreds of years ago, yet we are still able to read them, albeit with some difficulty, but read and understand them nonetheless. Words if used correctly have the power to influence people long after one has died. If the message behind those words is still valid and the way it is conveyed is logical, then it does not matter if the language is outdated. People still read and recite Shakespeare long after what even he assumed people would remember him for. In the end, that is what poetry is meant to do. To carry on people’s traditions, stories, customs, beliefs, ideas, and morals for generations and centuries to come. To end this reflection on poetry, I will refer to perhaps the ultimate example of a poem surpassing thousands of years of human history to still tell its tales. This is the Epic of Gilgamesh, commonly referred to as the first great work of poetry. Will Shakespeare’s sonnets and the other poems that we think of as important now last quite as long? Only time will tell. In the mean time, new poets can add their works to humanity’s pool of poetry so that others can learn, far into the future.