We closed in class on tuesday with the purpose of studying poetry. I haven't really been able to stop thinking about it. This is probably because I love poetry so much and I've never thought to explain why. To understand it in a class setting is a bit foreign to me. I don't know what to think about studying The Waste Land tomorrow because I have read it for years and have never had to understand it in an intellectual sense. I just like it. I like the way it makes me feel, what it makes me think about. I was homeschooled, so most of my interaction with literature has been just reading it. over and over again. I carried around a beat up copy of T S Elliot poems everywhere i went my junior and senior year in high school. No one ever asked me to explain Prufrock, or what the "overwhelming question'' was. I read one time that Elliot said great art should be felt before it is understood, and I agree. Not that it shouldn't be understood, but just that you should feel it first. When Dr. Abernathy yelled out "turning turning in the widening gyre/ the falcon cannot hear the falconer" I FELT the words, and something in me knows exactly what they mean, even though we toss around the concepts for an hour in class and I can't make any sense of them. So, I don't know if I'll have anything profound to say about The Waste Land, but it's beautiful and sad, and i do get that.
ps- i commented on "like a lost falcon..."
I envy where you come from with your approach on poetry. You are reading it and feeling it and experiencing it, something that public school told me I could not do. I hate that I demand an answer from the poetry I encounter, as if it owes me something. It is something I have been trying to rid myself of which easier said than done, but obviously doable as you have shown. Feelings and experiences are things that we can comprehend, especially when the answers are not always clear. Good word, Mal.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with poetry is that poems are vastly different. Some have a literal meaning and some are esoteric, open to interpretation. Individual poets differ in style and attitude. (Contrast something heavy like "Second Coming" to lighthearted limericks.)
DeleteIt usually helps to know something of the author's life before reading the poem. The head knowledge you possess can give the reading experience a greater depth.