Poetry

I used to think poetry was awful. When we read poems in elementary school, I hated how amorphous and open-to-interpretation most of them were. When the poetry unit came around in middle school, I was dreading it. My opinion changed when we read some of Edgar Allan Poe's work. I wouldn't say that his work profoundly affected me in any way, but I thought his writing was really cool.

Though I have yet to read poetry in high school as part of a class, I have found my taste for it growing recently. Some poems do sound nice or, for lack of a better word, are simply 'cool". But some poems are so much more than that. They can reach a level of understanding on a topic that seems impossible to put into words. They can make me feel sad without ever saying anything saddening. They can make me feel happy in a tenth as many words as a novel or short story.

What my elementary and middle school brain didn't understand is that poetry's vagueness and indirect language is what makes it so fantastic and gives it such potential. Some things can seem hard to put into words because our language simply doesn't have ample words to describe them. Poetry strives to explain the inexplicable by making connections and using language as a tool to accomplish much greater means.

Of course, not all poems are meant to delve into greater understanding. Some of my favorite poems are meant to evoke an emotion or make a statement of some sort. However, all types of poetry use language in similar ways.

Below is an example of one of my favorite poems:

"Invictus"

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Also, here is the scariest version of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" ever. Because it's Christopher Walken.