Why I Love Poetry
By Caroline Kunz, written August 2024
In the words of Robert Frost, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” A simple, yet meaningful phrase that largely sums up why I love poetry. Writing poetry allows one the space to grapple with and sort out their most complicated emotions and experiences. Reading poetry allows one the ability to find names for the feelings they once found too difficult to identify. In my experience, poetry brings with it the greatest sense of comfort and relief, no matter how one engages with it.
My sentiments toward poetry haven’t always been so fond. Growing up, I couldn’t stand it. English class was always my favorite—I loved sinking my teeth into books that made me think, like The Giver and To Kill a Mockingbird, and I aced every quiz on figurative language and literary terminology. However, something about the yearly poetry unit left me less than enthused. I thought that poetry’s primary purpose was to remain mysterious and inaccessible, hiding some deeper message that only those well-versed in literature could decode. I believed that all poems needed to sound like a nursery rhyme—the more elaborate the rhyme scheme, the better. Squinting at the board in the front of the room, I tried to piece together what Edgar Allen Poe’s Raven meant when it squawked, “Nevermore,” wondering what was so important about the repetitive word, anyway. I took a stab at analyzing “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Caroll but felt as though I was reading another language. Were “brillig” and “slithy” even real words?
It wasn’t until I studied poetry in my junior year of high school that my opinions started to shift. It’s true that one teacher can completely change a mindset, proving all preconceived notions about a subject to be false. On the first day of the unit, my English teacher had our class open our American Literature Anthologies to a piece called “Desert Places” by Robert Frost. My only experience with Frost at that point had been reading “Nothing Gold Can Stay” in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. All I remembered was how confused the short poem had made me feel. I didn’t expect to enjoy this next one, either. Nonetheless, we read.
“What do the images in this poem have in common?” My teacher asked. Everything is desolate and blank, I thought. “Beyond nature and the outdoors, what do these images make you think of?” Loneliness, isolation, melancholy. Maybe it was the step-by-step analysis that my teacher walked us through. Or maybe, it was the fact that at that point in my life, I’d learned the stresses of balancing school with a part-time job and extracurriculars, friendship drama, keeping a strong GPA, and applying to colleges. I’d experienced the nostalgia of growing older (perhaps, Frost was right, after all, when he concluded that “nothing gold can stay”), the sadness of losing a grandparent and an aunt, the uncomfortable presence of change. Maybe it was because I’d shared in these human experiences that I was able to put aside the rhyme scheme and see the poem for what it was: a testimony to the feelings of loneliness and uncertainty that all of us have experienced. An ode to the notion that, at times, we’ve all felt as though we’re wandering a barren path, isolated and alone in our fears that we’ll never find our way through the uncharted territory. It was beautiful. I felt a strange sense of comfort in reading these words—I didn’t know that poetry could be emotional and relatable, allowing readers to see their feelings represented and validated in such short stanzas. I copied the poem down into my notebook so I wouldn’t forget it.
From that point on, I became eager to find poems like “Desert Places”—poems that I could read and digest and apply so easily to my own life. I inhaled the works of Emily Dickinson and Wendy Cope, Oscar Wilde and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I was fascinated by the fact that older poems such as these could still hold so much weight, still resonate so deeply with readers of any age. Before I knew it, my bookshelf was overtaken by a collection of little poetry books.
It’s no surprise that once the poetry bug bit, I decided to study English and writing at college. At present, I’ve completed three years, and I can say with confidence that the poetry classes I take are my favorite. I love the poems that my professor brings for us to read each week—Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Glück, Robert Lowell. I love getting to explore new genres, forms, styles, and narrative voices. I love getting to know my classmates and their opinions so well as we bounce ideas across our classroom’s round conference table. I love our in-class workshops; before every Thursday, we each write a poem to be brought in and edited, questioned, admired, and reworked by our professor at the front of the room.
“No, you can’t use that cliche.”
“I admire the risks you took with this one.”
“Why don’t we just get rid of the first three stanzas?”
“The heart of the poem is really here, in the last two.”
I love the conversation that I have with her red pen as I make my edits the day after a workshop. It’s fascinating to create my own work, seeing which topics I gravitate toward and which I shy away from. While the essays and analyses that I’m assigned in my English classes often prove to be stressors, these poems that I have due each Thursday act as a release, both creatively and emotionally. And, in turn, I’ve found that crafting so many poems has helped to strengthen my writing in every other academic area—it’s helped me to find a sense of conciseness, a greater awareness of pace and phrasing.
Last spring, during the final week of my “Poetic Influence” class, my professor could see the weariness in our eyes. Our once lively class discussions had turned sullen and sparse. We begged for extensions and handed in late assignments left and right, which she usually had no tolerance for. With mere days before final exams began, we were giving her all that we had. “I thought today I’d bring in one of my favorites by Ellen Bass called, ‘The Thing Is,’” she said. “You all could clearly use it.”
In that moment, these words were exactly what I needed to hear. The stress and anxiety brought on by the upcoming exams, the 12-page paper I had due that night, my yearly end-of-semester mystery illness, the bittersweetness of saying goodbye to my friends for the summer, the fact that I hadn’t even begun to pack up my apartment for move-out . . . all seemed to melt away. Bass reminded me that pain, fear, and grief are all inevitable. Suddenly, my problems seemed to become a lot smaller, and I knew that, while I didn’t love life in this particular moment, I would soon “hold it like a face” and appreciate it once again.
So, if you ask me why I love poetry, the answer is simple. Poetry allows us to feel less alone. Poems are like companions. Little reminders that we can stick in our back pocket, taking them out and consulting their advice when we need it most. Poetry grows up with us; “Desert Places” is still with me, in that old notebook from junior year, and in the Frost books that I keep on my shelf. Poetry is more than mere pretty words strung together to sound like an ode or a fairy tale. Poetry is complex, emotive, withstanding. Poetry is universal.
Caroline Kunz (she/her) is a rising senior at Loyola University Maryland, where she studies English and writing on a pre-MAT track. She enjoys traveling, scouting out new coffee shops, and of course, reading and writing. As an aspiring educator, she hopes to share her love of the written word with future generations of students. Her current favorite authors include Taylor Jenkins Reid and Celeste Ng.
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