Studying poetry is not as scary as it seems.
To many people who have taken an English class in their lives, poetry can seem like a daunting, confusing and incomprehensible task. Sometimes the verse is extremely metaphorical, and sometimes it is very literal. This can catch many readers off guard and make them feel very lost on when to dig deeper into the content and when to hold back. This was how I felt coming into college. I was extremely nervous about taking college-level poetry courses, and I wanted to stay in the prose realm.
Now, after having taken two poetry–based classes since I started college last year, I can confidently say that I am not scared of being constantly surrounded by poetry. Once you test yourself by moving out of your reading comfort zone, liking poetry will follow.
Last fall, I had initially assumed that the literature course, which was part of my first-year interest group—or FIG—would be focused on prose. When I finally read the syllabus for the class, I became nervous upon noticing that all of the readings were part of poetry anthologies and collections. In high school I had read poetry, but every time that we went over the material, I always felt very lost and confused as to what was happening. In my classes, we didn’t go super in-depth and mainly talked about poetry in a similar sense to the prose that we read.
Taking English 174: Protest Literature with Dr. Sarah Wood, as well as English 304: Introduction to Creative Writing is what completely changed my perspective on poetry. In Dr. Wood’s class we examined poetry on a much deeper level than I ever had before by exploring the relationship between the form and the content of a poem. This opened my eyes to how people like poetry. Poetry now felt like I was deciphering part of a puzzle by closely analyzing the meter, the shape and the rhyme scheme of each poem. Having the ability to understand this relationship and the opportunity to practice this type of examination over and over helped build my confidence in my abilities to analyze and read poetry.
In terms of taking Intro to Creative Writing, this class is what really pushed my poetry abilities. The class focused on both poetry and prose, but the class was taught by a poetry fellow, which also offered a unique experience in how I understood poetry. Hearing about poetry from someone so passionate about it was very eye-opening. In the class, we went over the most basic information about poetry and then explored how these basics can be manipulated and used by different poets. We applied all of this knowledge to different kinds of poetry that we read in class, but the main feature of this class was the writing aspect. Having to write poetry was one of the biggest ways in which I learned about how to study it. Focusing on your own form—including your own meter, lines and shape—helps you realize what techniques even the greatest of poets are using in their own poetry. I grew not only as a writer, but as a reader as well.
So, to anyone who feels scared of poetry: take a class—knowingly or unknowingly—based in verse and the whole world of poetry will seem a little bit more welcoming. Not only will you learn more about poetry, but you will be able to pay more attention to the content of any sort of analysis that you do, whether it is in verse or in prose as well.