We Americans Should Read Poetry
Why many Americans should read poetry Americans should read poetry because it inspires, challenges, and tells stories of emotions that can help you find deep meaning inside yourself. Even though much of the famous poetry in the world came from Europe during the renaissance, students around the world study it. Yet in America we lack courses that effectively explain the meaning and importance of poetry. Poetry can change your life around because it makes you search your soul for answers that otherwise would remain covered by hatred, sorrow, sadness and jealousy. Many of our feelings that we experience and don’t understand are put under the microscope of poetry and polished until the answer in forever engrained in your heart. Poems can cure the depressed by making them search for meaning in their life. In my opinion poems about emotions are the most influential and palpable. Below is one of my favorite poems of all time. I like this poem because I still can’t figure out its true meaning…
The first true sign of love is anger:
What we need, we're likely to resent.
Each needing, needed, leaned on, leaning,
No longer free standing stone and white.
The wistful, tender fear of finity
Yields a darker shimmer of sublimity.
Now indeed some sunny, delicate blight inaugurates a subterranean keening.
None can turn away and not be bent,
Each in each part self, part untouched stranger. Poetry challenges our brain to think outside its comfort zone. Our brains like to stitch information together in a rational form, poetry clashes head on with your brain and forces it to look at emotions not as an abstract feeling but as a tangible object that we can relate to. Poetry is like a cavern, if you have a flashlight you still won’t be able to fully study its meaning for existence. You need something more, something brighter like your brain. Your brain will take bits of information and weave it together like a puzzle until something rational is both reasonable and likely.
The first true sign of love is anger:
What we need, we're likely to resent.
Each needing, needed, leaned on, leaning,
No longer free standing stone and white.
The wistful, tender fear of finity
Yields a darker shimmer of sublimity.
Now indeed some sunny, delicate blight inaugurates a subterranean keening.
None can turn away and not be bent,
Each in each part self, part untouched stranger. Poetry challenges our brain to think outside its comfort zone. Our brains like to stitch information together in a rational form, poetry clashes head on with your brain and forces it to look at emotions not as an abstract feeling but as a tangible object that we can relate to. Poetry is like a cavern, if you have a flashlight you still won’t be able to fully study its meaning for existence. You need something more, something brighter like your brain. Your brain will take bits of information and weave it together like a puzzle until something rational is both reasonable and likely.