What's So Great About Poetry Anyways?

If you ask the average person how they feel about poetry, they might tell you that it is boring or pompous, but to generalize poetry as such just shows that such a person may have never read any poetry outside of an academic setting. The thing about poetry is that it is a massive genre of literature. Many readers have a specific type of book or genre that they love to read, and that may be all they enjoy reading, but people often neglect the fact that poetry has endless styles and genres within itself. There is epic poetry, haikus, free form poems that many feel they can relate to, complex poems that take several readings to understand, plays as poetry, and so much more. If you dig deep enough, there is a very good chance you will find a type of poetry that was especially made for you. But what’s the point?

Because there are so many selections of poetry, the benefits to reading poetry can be endless. In schools, we tend to analyze poetry, building our critical reading and thinking skills, and sometimes killing the excitement of a good poem. However, some individuals read poetry to better understand topics such as themselves, human nature, love, loss, and well the list goes on. In this case, they most likely benefit most from reading free formed poems, you know, the type your friends post on their Instagram stories or their Twitter profiles (I’ll stop pretending that I am not one of these people and just admit these poems are my guilty pleasure). The reason being, this form of poetry tends to be more straightforward and relatable. 

But let us not forget the famous works of poetry developed by minds as brilliant as Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and many more. Maybe, for some, these works are a little more complex, not only engaging those critical skills, but also relating deeper messages about the world. Perhaps you are thinking, “well can’t free form poetry give us worldwide messages too?” And the answer is yes, on occasion. Yet, many times these poems simply convey an emotion and that is all they convey. And while poet’s such as Ovid may be considered convoluted to some, we cannot argue that his epic poetry was only meant to tell a story and leave no greater message behind. The works of Ovid, and other poets like him, are considered classics because they are not meant to convey a simple emotion, they are meant to teach readers something about the complex innerworkings of the world in which we live. 

Maybe you enjoy reading simple, straightforward works, or maybe you crave the most intricate works of literature one could possibly find. Well good news, you can find both of these and everything in between in the poetry section of your favorite bookstore. The benefits of reading poetry will vary among individual readers, but with all the poems that exist, it would be impossible for anyone to not find even one poem that they enjoy, and if one even simply just enjoys a poem, is there not value in that? Perhaps I have not convinced you that there is any real or sufficient reason for why we should read poetry, but my stance remains: the value of poetry is endless and timeless.