"On His Blindness"
WHEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
- John Milton
A lot of people categorize poetry as a complex, vague art form that is only deserved for those with a particular intellect. Poetry is subjective, and hard to read, and boring. Sometimes, even written in English, it doesn't sound like English. Usually the lines don't even rhyme and don't have a particular rhythm to them. Poems don't even teach you as much English as, say, studying a novel like Crime and Punishment. Nonsense and more nonsense, why would you waste your time reading it?
But poetry isn't that bad. You can learn to like it. It just all depends on how you take it.
Poetry comes in weird sentences and words and lines that end abruptly, with punctuational deficiencies and sometimes go for a long, long time, and some that are only a few words. Some are structured like Shakespearean sonnets, but others are free verse. It's this unrestrained aspect of it that gives it such subjectivity when it comes to interpretation. The poem could be of a single verse with four lines, with one straightforward meaning, but different people can dissect it in all different ways and come to so many conclusions. It links with how certain lines in the poem might coincide with your own experiences and such you shine it under your own light.
Personally, I've found reading poetry as almost reading music. Listening to a song with my eyes. I take it in with all of its eccentricities and make a scene, subjective to me, where all these things are happening so weirdly and freely and otherworldly. If I ever come across something that doesn't make sense, I'll think of ways that it could fit into the narrative in my mind.
As mentioned in this article, which describes a study of people being shown poems they have and have not heard before, "Every person claimed to have felt chills at some point during the process, and about 40 percent showed visible goose bumps." Not all participants were avid poetry readers, which shows that everyone can feel at least something when reading poetry.
As mentioned before, poetry is built very vaguely, with things like metaphors, imagery and alliteration thrown in. To be able to pick a poem apart, it really takes time and effort to see certain things at a certain angle you mightn't looked from before. Then to maybe also to see how not all things might fall in the correct order and are instead disarrayed.
"Jabberwocky"
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
- Lewis Carroll
To be able to finally get all of it and to experience the poem? That hits a certain spot. As much as the majority of the creative aspects of English are considered emotional, poetry might be the most emotional, the most sentimental, the most personal.
And another good part of being able to interpret poetry is its ability to allow you to use those skills of seeing things at different angles in other aspects of education, or of life. As brought up near the end of this article, "People who soak in metaphor regularly are very unlikely to be bigots." I mean, fair enough. If you literally take the time to read works of art, or whatever you would consider poetry as, and put yourself in the artist's mind and rearrange and redraw and repaint the poem, then you wouldn't have a hard time going along with someone else in an argument.
