An Eye-opening Experience

Honestly, I didn't like poems that much at all. For me they were broken narratives, broken phrases, and broken thoughts of the mind strewn by rhymes. The fault is not on the poems. They were beautiful but I was blind to them.

In my head poems mean reading more than twice the same sentence and still without understanding. There was this Literature class that got me into poems though, and since then I've become more appreciative of the genius minds of the poets.

Edgar Allan Poe. Image taken from
www.theguardian.com

Do you know Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe? We learn it from high school but I didn't fully understand it until I was in college, especially after learning about its theorized background story (Thanks to the movie The Raven, I became curious about this genius and his works). His The Raven is also a masterpiece, but even after reading it five times I still didn't fully understand it and had to do a research on it. Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise are also empowering. Of course there are various more poems and poets like William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and Pablo Neruda but I wouldn't pretend to be a poem critic. I remember reading Romeo and Juliet and losing my mind.

The thing is, poems are powerful especially when you have to read between the lines. At first you think it's about riding a bike and then a few lines later you realize it's about life. Other poems are also songs but those kind usually need no second look. Nonetheless, that shouldn’t disentitle them as masterpieces.

About my Literature class, we had a poem-making exercise. I was really troubled knowing I lacked the creative knack necessary for beautiful strings of words but heck—I did my best. Still, the best part is that I’ve opened my eyes to this new world. An artful one.