REPOST....The Essay

I posted "The Essay" from my iPhone and I am assuming that there was a glitch because the actual body of the post was never posted.

The Essay, "How to Read a Poem," was written by Joseph Coulson and Peter Temes. They wrote the essay to help readers understand the poems that they are reading. I learned not only ways to be patient and understand a poem, but something about myself as well. After reading a poem one time, I often get confused and assume that the whole poem is a bunch of random thoughts that the author strung together. I cannot make assumptions based on a one-time reading experience. The essay talks about prior assumptions before digging deeper into the words of the poem. One quote that I really enjoyed from the poem was, "...encountering a difficult poem is like a game or sport, say rock climbing, that makes you work a bit." I think that if everyone looked at poems like sports, less people would get frusterated. The poem needs to be read a few times, much like the warming up process before a game. The more practicing there is, the better the end result will be. The best result would obviously be to win the game, or in this case to fully understand the puropose and meaning of the poem.

I honestly learned a lot from this poem. I struggle with reading poems, so this will be an excellent help to break them down.