Week 1: Blog

Poetry Introduction

In high school, teenagers are exposed to the introductions of poetry through various literary terms (alliteration, personification, simile, metaphor). However, when an individual looks outside of the conventional thinking and analysis of poetry, there is much more to offer in terms of understanding and interpretation. I personally believe that there is no correct meaning for a line in a poem; perhaps the author's intention may be to state something simple such as, "the balloon between the girl and the boy was red." However, upon analysis one person may view the red balloon as a symbol of love, while the person sitting adjacent to them may view it as hatred and bloodshed. As we discovered in class, there is a sort of magic that appears in a poem but at first I was unsure as to how to describe the magic. I believe the magic is created when a word can have many different interpretations, as it causes each individual to ponder over what emotion the author is trying to provoke or portray. The type of magic I would associate poetry with is illusions, because while the magician sees how the trick is being played, the audience is left wondering how in the world did he/she produce something so extravagant? While I have not been a big fan of poetry, mainly because I have not been exposed to it, I feel some sort of connection to it mainly due to my fascination with magic. The technique we learned in class enhanced my understanding of poetry, and above all instigated interest in my mind for the correlation between magic and poetry.