Personally, I have never been a fan of poetry, however, I do agree that it helps people understand and appreciate the world around us. Petry can offer people a way to empathize with one another. In its immediacy, poetry is a counsellor helping people to understand one another and leading us away from hate to love, from violence to mercy and pity. Since I have never been deeply interested in Poetry, all the activities in Week 11, helped me view it differently. The reading materials and the videos helped me deepen my knowledge of Poetry and showed me the importance of it in people’s lives. For example, I really liked “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare. In this sonnet, Shakespeare also claims to have the power to preserve his love’s beauty through poetry. Shakespeare uses Sonnet 18 to praise his beloved’s beauty and describe how their beauty is preferable to a summer day. The stability of love and its power to immortalize someone is the overarching theme of this poem. It deals with the theme of beauty and how it can be affected by prolonged lapses of time.
Daily Archives: November 4, 2022
My idea of what I believed poetry was about is a combination of rhymes, analogies and personifications that were dumped into a few sentences and didn’t make much sense to me. Although I know that there’s a lot of passion that comes from poetry, I have to say that it’s extremely difficult to understand. After reading “How to Read a Poem” I was intrigued with the phrase “Embracing Ambiguity” which means that people tend to avoid uncertainty and are able to cope with change which offers the opportunity of learning. Often times readers give up on confusing expressions especially in poetry and embracing ambiguity directs readers into letting go of the idea that poetry is boring and let poetry take control without any assumptions or misinterpretations.
Reading poetry and really understanding the deep meaning of them was something that I had always struggled with. After doing the Week 11 assignments I have learned to not only see the base purpose of the poetry but to dive deeper and understand what the author is really trying to tell us—specifically reading the poets.org post on how to read a poem and breaking down the process of reading a poem to understand it deeply. Talking back to the poem and asking all these questions back to it was something that I had never thought of till reading this. It gave me a better understanding of how the poet wanted us to read their poem. Knowing the context of the poem was also something that I had never thought of, I had always read poems as a stand-alone piece of text but now I see that it is important to read between the lines and see what’s not right there in front of you.
After reading the material It was interesting to learn that there are both Italian and Elizabethan (Shakespearean) sonnets considering that the latter is the most popular I had no idea that the former existed. Also, how the structure of each differs, with Italian Sonnets consisting of an 8/6 composition (8-line Octave and 6-line sestet) while Shakespearean sonnets have makeup of 4/4/4/2, (3 quatrains and a 2-line rhyming couplet at the end) both equating to a 14-line makeup. Also, the ambiguous nature of poetry, we often read poetry and try to interpret it at face value when actuality the meaning behind the poem is often hidden with colorful language. Sonnet 18 is considered one of Shakespeare’s most romantic works, leading the reader to believe it is an ode to someone he fancy’s when in actuality the subject is that of a young man known as the “Fair Youth” who is handsome and widely sought after. The poem is in reality one of admiration rather than romantic notions.
My ideas about poetry have changed drastically after reading week 11 readings and activities. Before I thought reading poems was very simple but after week 11 readings it showed me how poems can be way more complicated than it may seem on the surface level. Reading “how to read a poem” had the biggest impact on my thoughts regarding poems it made me realize I was one of those readers who made 2 of the 3 false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem which was Assuming that I should understand what I encounter on the first reading and 2. Assuming the poem is a code I should crack and if I can’t do so I’ve missed the point of the poem. It also taught me to read poems out loud which is something I never do when reading poems. All in all this week readings helped me understand poetry way better than I did before and given me alot of useful tips I can use on the poems I read in the future
After doing all these activities I learned that poetry is a lot more complex than I previously thought, especially when it comes to sonnets and the differences between the Italian version and the English version. Sometimes I would go and read poems or stories and realize that I didn’t really understand the true meaning of the poem but when looking at the how to read a poem activity and the activity on Shakespeare also helped me to understand poems and poetry in general a lot better. I also learned about the Shakespearean sonnets which are split up into 3 sections while having 4 lines each while Italian sonnets don’t seem to have any couplets, Shakespearean sonnets also wrap up the end of the third section by giving a brief line or two summary about what the message of the poem was. Overall this week’s activity helped e to come away with a much better understanding of poetry writing and overall how to read poetry and stories in general and it was overall a helpful week of activities.
Before doing all these activities I used to think poems looked very simple at face value but now I know that there is more to poems than I thought. When I used to read poems If I didn’t get the message or the point at the beginning I would just assume that it was too difficult for me to understand. After reading the activity 2 article “How to read a Poem.” I have better ways to try and understand a poem. The questions in the article can give me a base line of questions to ask myself when reading the poem to get a better understanding. I also didn’t know about some of the forms of poems like sonnets. I found it interesting that sonnets can be in different categories even though they are both sonnets. In activity 3 I found it interesting how an Italian sonnet has two different stanzas with the octave being 8 lines and the sestet being 6 lines. I also found it interesting how the octave would show a question with the sestet showing the answer.
