March 12, 2011
Understanding Poetry Is Hard.
Here’s some random ramblings about my thought processes: I find it interesting how my “poetry brain” works.
As someone who goes by a name that includes “poet” right in there, and who is writing a ton of poetry for her thesis, one would assume I can do poetry. I can read it, and think about it, and enjoy it. I totally can, too. That is something I am capable of. However, I find that, even more than most types of media, I can’t do that stuff with poetry if I am the least bit tired.
I mean, okay, give me a novel when I’m tired, and it’s going to be very slow going reading it, sure. I may nod off. But when I get done reading it, I can still tell you about it, and at least somewhat break down themes and things the author is attempting to do, and maybe even give a close reading or two of what I’ve read. I’m not going to say it’s going to be my best work ever, of course, but I can at least come up with something passable, that shows I’m the kind of crazy person who almost has a Masters degree in this shit.
However, today, I was trying to read and write a review of a book of poetry. I was feeling a little out of it and exhausted, but I was there to work, so I was trying to get it done. I would read the same poem three or four times, and if I didn’t nod off in the middle of it, I would get through and not understand a damn thing about it. I would have no clue what I just read. I’d read it again, and be unable to find the meaning in the words once again. I attempted to write a review, but I couldn’t say anything worthwhile about what I had just read. It was worthless effort.
This isn’t the first time it has happened, either. I just have so much trouble with poetry when I can’t focus, the kind of trouble I simply don’t have when analyzing other mediums.
I really wonder what it is about poems that makes this happen to me. Is it because I have to be able to hold the whole poem in my head to be able to see the connections, whereas something like a short story is a narrative line, and I don’t have to keep specifics, just generalities? That doesn’t sound like an implausible reason. Maybe it’s because poetry is so image-heavy, and when I can’t focus, I can’t create the images clear enough to see the reason why they’re there? That also could be it.
I really don’t know. I just know that poetry is something I really have to be in a state of mind conducive to thinking to be able to consume. You’d think I’d have figured out some other way to do it by now, but I haven’t, really. Oh well.