I really don’t like poetry.

There it is.  I said it.  I’m not a fan.  I’m sorry.

Despite my general love of all things Literature with an ‘L’ as anything considered Well-Written Awesomeness in this world, poetry and I just never truly meshed.

I don’t think that’s on any level at the fault of poetry itself, as a form, style, or structure, if there’s a difference between such things?  I’ve just always been taught to read poetry that certain way. That formalist, New Critical method where the meaning of the poem is some Objective Truth with an ‘O’ and ‘T’ just waiting to be unearthed by each and every reader. i.e., me. Because authorial intent (or so I was once told) is king: the beginning and end of interpretive reading. What I thought of the poem or how I reacted to it barely mattered. But I was often taught to read all literature the same way yet didn’t have this problem with other forms.

Yet novels and short stories—and perhaps just prose in general—is meant to be understood. Sure, not everyone is meant to “get” Ulysses. But I would argue that James Joyce is very much an exception to the rule. Strictly speaking, prose is written in a language, more often than not, in a style that is intended to be understood thematically if not plainly; something written as “prosaic” is something entirely meant to be common-place, bridled in opposition to “poetic” language. Any attempt otherwise is just an overturning of convention.

So after all those years being forced to interpret in the formalist, New Critical technique of reading, I “got” the message of a novel, short story, or whatever, because they’re generally written in ways to be understood. But poetry always came to me later, if at all. And I guess that’s where my disconnection from poetry arose.

Not to make any too-sweeping claims, but my long-time disconnection with poetry arose likely because trying to “get” the message of a poem is to so painfully miss the point. Perhaps it was wrong of my instructors all those years force-feeding the “meaning” of the poem rather than asking: “Well, Alex, what does this poem mean to you?”

Like the way in which we often pick our favorite songs, albums, or bands, there’s a resonance to poetry that speaks to readers on a level that gets well-beyond the constraints of theme, motif, or message. It’s a feeling. Poetry is a feeling. And students will react to that feeling differently, just as my best friend will roll his eyes when I put Radiohead on the car stereo.

I think that helps too, to have struggled that way with poetry. To think that everyone will automatically come to appreciate it or understand it the same way one does would be a mistake; one must draw in readers of various perspectives, avoiding “apathy” if you will. To garner the attention of most of your students you must create an approach to poetry that eliminates “getting at the objective meaning” and more about “what it means” to them.

Students are still allowed to dislike poetry, as I often do, but they should be coming to that conclusion through their own perspective, in that it does not relate or resonate with them—not that they simply don’t “understand” it or its “meaning”—whatever that is.

I am learning to live with poetry, and feel better about my relationship to it having better understood how to read it. I just want to make sure no one endures the growing pains that I had to.