Araceli Cortez Discussion 11

Before week 11 readings, I didn’t know much about poetry. I knew that they rhymed and thought they always had a special code you had to crack throughout the poem. After reading activity two, I have seen that this is a common assumption made and there is more to poetry. “The second is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point”(Hirsch). This one really stood out to me because referring back to high school, this is what I was told by my English teachers and I had carried that way of thinking about poetry ever since. Another thing that changed the way I see poetry is from activity three, sonnets. These were usually written about love from suitors to woman that they liked. Other topics were about nature and man’s roles in the world. These are always written in 14 lines and only about one subject. This is something very new to me because I did not know poetry has more meaning to it than just rhyming and short lines. I definitely see poetry differently and as something very exciting now.