Poetry

Well, we're finally back on track with the blogging! :( Haha
And this week's topic is poetry! Unfortunately, I realized that poetry is not my thing. I never had
a very clear understanding of poetry pieces I read in previous classes, but having to analyze them
word for word made it even more obvious to me that I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for
in these works. Honestly, it wasn't HORRIBLE. Some of the poems that we read made complete
sense to me, and I was able to feel and see the emotions of the speaker. However, there were other
ones which completely lost me and put me in a state of confusion. Of course, when we went over
it in class, Ms. Graham going over it sentence by sentence, I was able to see what the poem
was about and understand it. It frustrates me that I'm not such a great analyzer. So many
of my fellow AP Lit students are very insightful and able to pick out the important points of the
literature pieces, but how come I'm like the one lost sheep?
I tried to figure out the answer to this question and the I came up with 2 answers. One is confidence and the
other is lack of time and effort spent on analyzing. There are times when I find myself insightful and find really interesting points. But then, I start to wonder and think if what I found actually makes sense or if I'm not stretching the meaning too much. I back out from putting my thoughts into words and wait for someone else to come up with a different or similar finding. Also, when we had the activity of using class time to pre-read and
break apart the sample essay, I was actually able to understand the prompt and separate the important
sections from the rest, leaving me with important details. The guidelines Ms. Graham gave us
helped me a lot and I think it will be able to take me to a good place as long as I take the
time to practice and put it more to use.
Sometimes, I want to give up and just write whatever BS I can come up with. Maybe it'll make sense
on paper because literature doesn't always technically have only one meaning, especially poetry.
But the problem with that is, I suck at BSing. If only I was good at BSing.........haha not.
I really wish I had the skills to critically look at each piece of literature we read in class,
have some more confidence in my findings, and word my findings with sophisticated wording.
I wonder how much practice and time it would take me to do as good as I should be doing.