Reading: The Bedford Introduction to Literature by Michael Meyer (Hardcover)
Weight: 4.2 lbs

Poetry is cast in shades of moonlight, memories of the movie, “The Dead Poets Society”, and the words of Billy Collins. Of course poetry has sometimes been the impossible essays I’ve had to write in Spanish, the number times I’ve had to count meter, and “Anna Akhmatova’s Poetry as a Critique of Stalinism.” But on the whole, I love poetry. So far my loves are Billy Collins, William Wordsworth, Anna Akhmatova, Sylvia Plath, Becquer, Lorca, Julia de Burgos, John Donne, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo and Pablo Neruda. Sometimes however, I’m afraid that I only love the idea of loving poetry. There are poets I wish I loved, for example Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, but… I really don’t!
I like the “Introduction to Poetry” that author Michael Meyer gives: Don’t let yourself be intimidated. It’s good advice because poetry can often be intimidating. I get this image sometimes of a woman wearing all black and a beret, sitting on a stool in a smoky café. A bongo player by her thumps out beats as she throatily talks about… weird things. Poetry can be pretentious and high-brow, not necessarily bad things. But it can also be accessible. I firmly believe what Meyer says is true, you must allow yourself to respond emotionally to the poem. Then, you may begin to dissect the machinery.
Can poetry be rushed? I think it’s unfortunate that (some of) my literature teacher have tried to motivate us to read poetry or literature because “it’s on the AP exam.” Then the work becomes required drudgery. I wish teachers would remind us more often to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. I wish they’d remind us that reading a poem and writing an essay on it in 30 minutes isn’t exactly a true test of your literary capabilities. I wish they’d teach us to savor poems and remind us that we can savor a poem for our entire life and still not understand it.
While this anthology/textbook I have to read over break (in Bermuda!) is ridiculously large, I’m looking forward to it (sorta). After all, how bad can this anthology be if it includes Bruce Springstein and Kanye West?