Falling into poetry
Why do we have to explain everything?
Her dress was blue because she wanted to represent sadness and pain after her breakup. His hammer was a motif of hard work.
From poems to books, we pick apart everything in order to try to understand it — we rip it apart. We tear it apart with the blood getting in our nails. We scramble through it, our hands desperately searching for a reason. We grasp for anything that explains it even as the sand slips through.
We forget that this is a poem.
We forget to appreciate it simply for being there.
We forget the way the words flow or how the poem makes us feel.
I remember dreading the word “poetry” in English class because I never understand what poetry was. Sonnets. Iambic pentameter. Symbols.
Whenever my teacher would say that we were going to read a poem, I would try to search up the poem online because I was scared that my teacher would call on me and ask about what I thought the poem meant and I would be speechless, unable to say anything.
Anything from Wikipedia to Quora was where I found my answer for what the poem meant.
I didn’t feel smart searching up the poem, but seeing the look of satisfaction on my teacher’s face when I told him exactly what he wanted to hear was enough for me. I used the poem and then, I forgot about it and threw it aside.
However, Billy Colin, in his poem, “Introduction to Poetry,” said, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.”
It made me realize we have forgotten the meaning of poems. We only care about what it means. Once we do, we forget about it.
According to poet Paul Valéry, “A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words.”
A poem is not something that you just try to explain — it is supposed to make you feel something and when you are done reading it, you are changed. A part of you is different.
It is time we stop dissecting a poem as if it was a dead frog.
We can look at a poem for the first time from the pages of the book rather than Sparknotes.
We must cover our ears from other people trying to force their own analyses of the poem into us. We must plug our ears until the only words we can hear are our own.
They can scream and shout into our ears but we remain nonchalant.
We understand the poem based on how we feel about it and that is more than enough. We don’t need the validation of our English teacher. We don’t need a good grade on a poem analysis. We just need to appreciate the poem for simply being there.
For the longest time, I was so scared of poetry but now, I look at poetry, ready to explore what it means. I am ready to fall into the abyss of darkness because I know at the bottom, there is water to catch me. So I fall.
Without fear.
Without validation.
Without a reason.
