A lot of people, it seems, find poetry a little intimidating.
And some poets are a little more obscure than others. I remember the first time I read William Carlos Williams’ poem, The Red Wheelbarrow and wondered what on earth I was missing.
Why was this poem in every American poetry anthology? Sometimes it takes a while for a poem to grow on me. Sometimes one needs to understand a little more about an author for a poem to make sense.
Other poems strike me immediately with meaning and I could read them a hundred times and understand something new with each reading. Like T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.
The words poem and poetry come from the word poesis, meaning “making.” In Chinese, the word for poetry (shi or shih) comes from a word meaning song.
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