Creating Purpose in Poetry - Alex

Creating Purpose in Poetry



To a person that has not immersed himself or herself into the world of poetry, it may seem that the poetry they read already has a pretty clear meaning, a meaning that the author is trying to portray. However, to those people that have been to poetry readings or who have discussed poetry with those around them, it is very apparent that a simple change in tone can change the entire meaning of a poem.



Even in our writing class, when two different people read a poem the meaning and underlying tone of that poem changed completely. It could go from being sad to empowering, happy to judgmental, all because of a simple change in inflection. I believe that this is one of the reasons that going to poetry readings are important. By experiencing the environment and the emotion of one such poem, you can feel the passion of the writers, or of the readers that are performing these poems.



Personally, I much prefer poetry readings then reading a poem inside my head. I went to Busboys for an open mike night, and the enthusiasm and excitement that was portrayed by each poet really made you feel something, anything, about their poem. Creating purpose in poetry is not necessarily making people feel the emotion that the writer wanted; it is simply making people feel anything about the poem. This brings up the second part of creating purpose, which is allowing for different experiences to all relate to the same poem.



As a poet, the writers job is to make sure that people can relate to the poem, that it can invoke some type of feeling, and part of that is making sure that others’ experiences can somehow affect how they read the poem and interpret what is it that the poem is saying. This can be connected to the idea of war poetry in that depending on if you know anyone in the war or if you have been in the war yourself, you have a completely different view than anybody that isn’t directly connected. By writing a poem that allows all of these different groups of people to relate, but in a different way, is really a talent and makes a poem that much more relevant to society as we know it today. By reading a poem in a different manner, you allow it to relate to different groups of society by using the different emotions that can be portrayed.



Thus we see the importance, and the difficulties, of writing poetry. Poets have a way of writing poems for many different groups of people, all dealing with different things and relating the poems in different ways to their lives. And along with all of this, poets also write in a way that allows different people to read poetry and turn it into a different poem, one that reflects who they are and their life experiences. Through this widespread acceptance of all different types of people through one poem, poetry really finds a way to bring people together, even if it isn’t because they all find the same importance in a specific poem. By bringing these people together, allowing this connect, there is a purpose to poetry- bringing different people together in a common acceptance.