Poetry Plays with Perception

This excerpt from the poem, Dreams, by Langston Hughes

hangs on my office wall.

Poets play with perception when they write poetry making reading poetry another play in perception. When we read poetry we bring our own life experiences into play affecting our perception of the world around us.

Poetry can shine a light on the world we inhabit in language that is sometimes more palatable than either fiction or nonfiction. Poetry can tease our hearts and minds with possible meanings and interpretations. Poetry can use imagery and emotion to effectively push readers to think about life from a different perspective.

Many people have told me they don't read poetry because they don't understand poetry. I struggled to understand this until I started reading some of the "classic" poetry I'd avoided since college. Then I remembered how I used to think poetry was something I couldn't understand, and I got it. It changed the way I engaged with people who don't like poetry.

I'm not saying anyone has to like poetry. We all have our own tastes. That said, I will say that I'd suggest giving more modern poetry a chance.

Poetry is written in a time period, and as much as we'd - as in poets - would like to believe that poetry is timeless, it really isn't. We can read poetry from time periods and learn from them and even find they resonate with us, but it doesn't mean it wasn't written based on the times in which it was written. Poetry that transcends time tends to speak to the human condition, and that's why it transcends the time in which it is written, but still the language and the references will be based on the time period in which it was written. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. When one starts to interpret a poem written in a different time period, the important thing to understand is that when one applies their experiences to the poem, their interpretation of the poem might end up being incredibly different than the intention of the poet. And, again, that's okay.

Poetry doesn't need to be scary or feel like it's somehow outside our purview just because it was written in a different time. But, we also shouldn't feel bad when we don't immediately understand references from a time well before we were born.

As I discussed a few weeks again in my post about teaching poetry, we all have poetry in our lives. It's in the songs we listen to. It's in the commercials we watch. It's in the jokes we tell. It's on the inspirational posters we hang on walls. Poetry lives in many different forms, some more accessible than others.

Reading poetry offers an opportunity to expand one's way of looking at life and of feeling connected to others who are going through similar life experiences. When reading a poet who resonates, a chance to connect with the world around us is presented.

We can find words that inspire, encourage, connect, and enlighten in the lines of a poem. We can see the world around us through a different set of eyes that can help us feel more compassionate or stronger.

Poetry can open our eyes to a world beyond our experiences. It can offer us the opportunity to see that people who appear different from us feel the same emotions, think similar thoughts, have similar dreams, and pursue the same goals. Poetry can show us the effect of one small action rippling across the world between people who will never meet.

I read poetry, whether classics or modern poetry, because poetry makes me feel more connected to the world as it was, as it is, and as it could be. Poetry offers documentation of the history of the individual times in which people wrote the poems that can expand out to open eyes to the possibilities to understand the past in order to better understand the present to fight for the future desired. In just a few words, a poem can invoke patriotism, rebellion, love, friendship, hate, peace, family, grief, or hope - often in the same poem.

I write poetry to explore my own perceptions of the world around me as well as my perceptions of the perception of those around me. Poetry is a place where I play with words in hopes to provoke thought and invoke emotions in people even as I explore my own.

Poetry allows us to explore the painful in beautiful ways, to share lessons learned in easy to understand imagery, and to inspire the world to find hope in uplifting movement. Poetry entices us. Poetry pleasures us. Poetry allows us to speak painful truths using words that make the pain more bearable. Poetry allows us to see how much we are alike and how our differences have the power to make all our lives better.

When I discovered that poetry is what I make of it - both the poetry I write and the poetry I read, poetry felt more accessible to me and my confidence in the poetry I wrote grew as did my confidence in relating to the poetry I read. If poetry can bring us together, we should embrace that moment. Poetry offers a way of using the highly personal moments of life to extrapolate out to connect with others about our shared experience of living.

And I will end with a few lines from another poem I love, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Night by Robert Frost. I had a poster on my wall in college with these words on it. They inspired me when I felt like giving up. Sometimes I wish I still had that poster...

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.