I always tell myself that I can’t stand poetry whenever I was in any english class and forced to read it. Every time, I either feel confused or bored and would rather be reading any other story than whatever poen the class is looking at. Yet, I think about the music I listen to on a daily basis and think to myself, isn’t this a form of poetry? Especially when I listen to more hip-hop and rap than any other genre. So is it poetry that I hate? Is it just being forced to read it? Is it the fact that there isn’t any music behind it? I’m going to go with the latter. Music, in my opinion, is one of the most important parts of this world and almost all of it is poetry, whether we realize it or not. What do Christopher Wallace and Walt Whitman have in common? Their both New York poets. Wallace is more widely known as the incredible Notorious B.I.G. and my favorite rapper of all time. So is poetry really that bad? Probably not. I think that instead of seeing it as an assignment, I have to look at it like a song; what is the real message behind each line? What story is he/she telling me?
For those of us who “hate poetry,” we have to look at it in different ways. I know that it is a pain to try and interpret what a poet is trying to say when most of the time we can barely get through the first line without being confused. Yet, we did two exercises in class and we understood very confusing poems in much greater detail than before. So I’m not sure whether I can say I hate poetry or not, but I’m going to try to take another approach, think of it like a song. When I listen to music, I don’t only enjoy it, but I try to think of what the artist is trying to say through his/her music. Think of one of Tupac Shakur’s (another poet) famous song Changes and what he’s talking about in the essence of the song, of his poem.
I guess I can say that I fon’t hate poetry because if I did, I would be a hypocrite by listening to music. This is just a little insight in how to look at poetry in maybe a better light than how we usually do. Some of the greatest poets of the last 20 years we listen to on a daily basis.
