A Missing Piece

Like most of my recent blog posts, this one is on the shorter side as well, but it is still important to me nonetheless. Throughout the past week or so as we’ve been listening to poetry in class, a missing piece fell into place for me in my understanding and enjoyment of poetry. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize because it seems so obvious now, but poetry is an oral tradition and therefore should be read/listened to aloud to truly be understood. For the longest time, poetry was not my favorite thing in the world simply because I found it somewhat of a chore to understand. I had to read it a few times and ponder it over and over again to connect with the speaker’s message, and to me that was just not enjoyable. After listening to poetry every other day in class however, I realized what I was missing in my enjoyment of poetry: the oral component. In having the poems read to me, I connected with them on levels I previously only got to with multiple rereads and analyses. In hearing them, I picked up on things like pauses, inflection, and tone in the reader’s (speaker’s) voice, and that made it much easier for my brain to process and digest the poetry. Basically, I’ve come to the realization that I should be listening to poetry, not reading it.