I have always loved poetry. I enjoy its versatility, the beauty and brutishness it may carry, the rawest emotions it expresses. Having English as my second language, however, I always believed that my love and understanding for poetry in a deeper sense would forever be limited to Hungarian poems. They are the ones I grew up reading and analyzing, my vocabulary is much wider in that language, too, therefore it only made sense to me. Thankfully, that changed with Activity 8. I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more. The way the last two lines are worded makes me feel touched and awed in a way I believed only poems in my own language could. It is a relief to realize, I can truly appreciate a poem and its imagery even if it was written in my second language.
Daily Archives: April 9, 2022
Growing up poetry was never my thing I sometimes enjoyed some poetry, but I really wasn’t a fan of poetry. After watching the video on poetry and reading activity 2 I still feel the same way about poetry in a way. Although both is explaining how poetry is and what is in poetry it still doesn’t change the way I feel about poetry; however, It can be very interesting the two activity shows how poetry can be done and it gives a better understanding of poetry. Activity 2 actually breaks it down into pieces to make you understand the reading more which is helpful to people like me who really don’t like poetry or understands it. After fully reading activity 2 it made me kind of understand poetry more reading it out loud and asking yourself questions can make you understand the readings a lot.
Week 11 reading and activities expanded my knowledge of the differences between sonnets and poems. Before my exposure to week 11 activities, I could differentiate a poem from a sonnet. I was familiar with the term sonnet. Activity 5 was the most compelling because it expounded on my sonnet knowledge. Sonnets differ from poems in that sonnets contain fourteen lines and employ any form of formal rhyme scheme. On the contrary, poems express feelings and ideas in a given intensity using specific diction, rhyme, rhythm, and imagery. In addition to expounding my knowledge of sonnets, activity five also enhanced my understanding of reading a poem. Reading a poem requires students to read the poem loudly, read the poem silently line by line, and talk back to the poem. The last step talking to the poem is vital in understanding a poem since it prompts a reader to formulate specific questions regarding the poem. By answering the proposed questions, students can depict the major themes in a poem.
Poetry has always been hard for me to understand, especially Shakespeare. But the common lit reading of “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” was really helpful because of the structure with the questions. I surprised myself with answering all the questions right because I usually can’t focus when it comes to the language Shakespeare uses in his poetry or plays. The Common lit structure also helped with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee ” and I actually really enjoyed that poem, which is great because normally I would consider myself anti-poetry, just based on the fact that I don’t usually understand it. I also was gifted an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetry book like six years ago and I actually feel compelled to finally give it a read. But these exercises helped me a lot because with “What My Lips Have Kissed and Why and When” I read it, understood it, and loved it without any help.
