“I hate poetry.” “Poetry is boring.” “It’s so vague.” “Poetry makes no sense.” All opinions and statements we have all either heard or said of poetry. We, as college students, miss the days when poetry was so easily interpreted. We miss the days of Dr. Seuss books like Green Eggs & Ham and The Grinch. I used to think that if a work wasn’t rhyming it wasn’t poetry.
To me in order for something to be a poem it had to have some type of repetitive structure to it. I looked up the definition of poetry in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and this is what I found. Poetry, noun, is writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. I love rap music, especially 90’s hip hop. It wasn’t simply words that rhyme put together or thugs talking about gangbanging, the hoes, money, the “ice”, or the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. Rather artists and groups such as Nas, The Pharcyde, or A Tribe Called Soul, and The Roots had a meaning behind their words. Some were abstract in that the true meaning was totally different from what was was on portrayed on the surface. That being said, I feel that in order to truly appreciate the works of the greatest poets, one must deeply analyze the word usage, the structure the repetition, or something else like this poem by Carlie Christiansen.
The structure of this poem is so important. One could read each triangle in a different way and thus understand and read into it differently. Which one would you read first? Would you follow by the first word in each triangle which is a number? The truth is there is no correct way to read it. However you read it will influence how you understand it. To me, poetry is abstract and it is open to interpretation. The greatest poets are able to leave their works open for the most interpretation and that is what makes poetry interesting and even fun!
