As a Brazillian person, poetry and prose has always been a huge part of our national literature. However, I was not aware of the differences between poetry and prose, until I’ve watched the first video on the activities this week, “Poetry Lesson” by Tom Chester. Furthermore, I’ve found it quite amazing that instead of starting the video explaining what is poetry and comparing it to prose, he decided to start by saying what is “not” considered as poetry and prose. I have always thought that by starting the lesson knowing what we should not do, it becomes easier to understand the right concept and how to do it or identify it properly.
The second activity that I’ve found highly informative to help me understanding more about poetry, poems and prose was the reading “How to Read a Poem” by Edward Hirsch. The author defends that there are three false assumptions when it comes to reading poems. As one of them, he mentions “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” (Par 3). Particularly, I have always read every poem looking for a clue, a word or a saying that identifies the true meaning of the poetry, and it can become extremely frustrating at times. This week’s readings and activities was incredibly informative, and assisted me on understanding better how to identify, read and look for clues in poetry.
