On poetry...

Poetry is probably my least favorite part of any English class. I feel that you have to have so much preface that I'm always unprepared whenever I read poetry. It hasn't been that bad this time around, but it does take a lot of work to really grasp the ideas and concepts involved in explicating poetry. The poem I found most accessible was "Richard Cory" because I had been exposed to it previously. I read the poem in high school so I already had some background. Without any experience I would say "Lucasta" is most accessible. The theme of war and glory is nothing new and especially being a male these are pretty easy themes to understand. I do agree that poetry, at some level, is more gratifying than reading a novel when you interpret it correctly and derive your own meaning.

The most difficult poem for me was "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. There are so many allusions and literary devices that it is difficult to concentrate on the poem because you are trying to analyze the elements and the form. I had no idea what the point of the poem was after I read it. It is the typical poem that turns me off to poetry. It's weird sometimes you get a feeling about literature and you get it intuitively. I had none of that when I read that poem. It made sense when the professor explained it but I still wonder what Eliot was thinking. "The Flea" was a tough one too. How can someone compare love to a flea? What is that? I would never make that analogy to someone I wanted to "court". The language of the poem is archaic which brings me to the other part of English that really frustrates me... Shakespeare. His poem was actually pretty easy to understand so I hope that bodes well for the near future.