As a writer and an avid reader, you would think that I’d like virtually all forms of literature and wordplay. However, I have to admit that poetry just never quite made it into my heart. Okay, to be totally blunt, I really hate poetry.

Why, you ask? Simply because it’s confusing and requires far too much dissection and analysis for it to make any sense. If you want to say something, just say it. Why do you have to wax lyrical and talk in metaphors? Granted, I suppose this is probably the point of poetry or else it would be just another news bulletin, but there are other, better ways to play with words if you ask me.

As it happens, I was subjected to an unavoidable poetry course when I did my degree at university. And, I hated it so much that I didn’t look at a single line of verse until the weekend before the exam. I then found myself wading through pages and pages of incomprehensible rhythmical compositions and word analysis as I attempted to do a crash course. Big mistake! Let’s just say it was not a happy weekend or one that involved much sleep.

Ironically, when I got to the exam, I was then given the option to write an essay on the prescribed novel or on the poetry. Naturally, I chose the novel – although I was extremely annoyed that I’d analyzed all of that mind-numbing poetry for nothing!

There’s only one poem that I like, which is W.H. Auden’s Funeral Blues (Stop All the Clocks). Oh, alright, so the first five lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,’ are also quite nice, but beyond that I really draw the line.

Now, I know a lot of people adore poetry and it’s even got great street cred in the romance department. In essence, poetry is supposed to be the language of love and spouting sonnets to a loved one is considered ultra romantic.

Well I’m no doubt missing something, because the last time a guy grabbed my hand across the dinner table and started cooing sentimental stanzas I started planning my exit strategy. I confess, I had no idea what he was saying, but subconsciously I knew it couldn’t be good.

After all, if a famous, Pulitzer Prize winning poet can state the following about poetry, you have to wonder.

 “I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself.”
~ Carl Sandburg

If the authors of these convoluted creations don’t even understand what they are trying to say, then how on earth am I supposed to?

T.S. Eliot once said that “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood” and maybe that’s the crux which poetry is built on. It’s not necessarily about the wording, but about the feeling that the entire piece provokes.

This would explain why poetry is such a hit with those who are enamoured. I mean, there can be no doubt that one’s brain turns to mush when you fall in love, so why not croon some epic nonsense to your beloved? They will be too smitten to notice anyway.

© 2017 Audrey Whyte   All Rights Reserved