Quayyum Mustapha Discussion 7

I think I’ve gotten better at reading poetry over the past two weeks, but I still find myself rereading certain lines to really understand them. The older poems, especially ones like Shakespeare’s, are tricky because they don’t use modern language or sentence structures, which makes them harder to follow. At the same time, I think this has been good practice for reading Oedipus the King. For example, in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun, the line “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks” doesn’t flow like modern writing. You have to slow down and really think about what it’s saying. Oedipus the King has a similar style, with complex sentence structures and formal language, so reading poetry like this has helped me get used to paying closer attention to every word.