The Eighth Year of Poetry

I hate learning poetry in school.  I hate it very, very much.  It is not the poems; no, it could never be the poems...It's the way they are taught.  Never once have I thought the way my current teacher does, and her words irk me, when I know they probably shouldn't.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is when we analyze poetry.  We will talk about the meaning of poetry and what the author is talking about, but I don't think my teacher (or whoever came up with the lesson plans) understands that poetry isn't just about what the author means.  You see, the poet will write with something in their heart, perhaps a burden or a thought or a feeling or a memory, but that is not how it comes out.  When you read poetry, you are reading those burdens and thoughts and so on through shattered glass.  The original thought is not what matters.  It will make a difference, but it's not the main point.

In fact, there is not main point.

It's made of several different points.  It's not what the author sees, it's not what others see, and it's not what you see.  A poem is what all of you see.  We can all read a poem and take away different meanings, and no matter how different those meanings are, it's what the poem is when combined.

There is not a certain feeling that will always go with poetry.  Some are meant to be sad, and some are meant to be happy, but in real life, when are things just happy or sad?  You see, feelings are complex.   They are interwoven.  :There is not definite feeling that will go with poem.  You may get an overall impression, but that does not set a mood.

These are the reasons why people hate poetry.  If they could only see it how I could...from the eyes of somebody passionately in love with language...  Do you think they'd change their opinions then?  If you want to know why children are drawing the final line at poetry, this is why.  It's being taught.  Poetry can't be taught.  It can be something that you grow in the minds of students, it can be something you work on as students, and it can be something that is read and written in school, but it cannot be taught, because there are no laws or rules to poetry.  Haiku and Sonnet styled poetry will have steps to follow, but what about Free Verse?  The rules change over time.  There is no law to beauty.

In school, they are teaching us that there is a law to follow in poetry.  That's not true.  Because of this misguided concept, I honestly want to slam my head on the desk and go to the nurse for mental illness so that I wouldn't listen to what people believe poetry is.  Because it's not.  Poetry won't even be what I described it as.  It's something different to everyone.  It's something that you write when you don't realize it, and it's something that matters.

Algebra and Laws of Physics?  Those may be important in some way, but what would be without a poetry?  Probably a war drenched world with pollution and children starving in the streets.

Perhaps you know where I'm going with this.