Poetry MC response: Summer entry #2

• LEARN MORE POETRY VOCAB!
• "feel" the poem (emotion, author's tone)
• Learn to recognize subtle distinctions in meaning
• Recognize importance of capitalization, line breaks and how they place emphasis on certain things
• Learn the different types of poems (I kind of know sonnets)

 There were two things that seemed the very significant to me when I did the poetry exercises. The first was that I was in a "test-taking mode," where I just try to quickly analyze the contents of the poem and move on through the questions. In class (the only place where I really read poetry) I think I usually do something like this, and I don't really feel the meaning on the poem as I read it but just try to focus intensely and somehow dissect it that way. I don't think this really works for me, but maybe I just need more experience. It certainly hasn't made reading poetry the most enjoyable experience.

The other thing that stood out to me was that I didn't understand a lot of the vocabulary used in the questions about poetry, so I definitely need to learn that. I know that the book about reading literature like a "professor" said not to worry about types of poetry (other than sonnets), but I think for the purposes of this class I'll need to know some of the types. The more subtle parts of the poems escaped me, probably because I was trying to get through them quickly and wasn't able to make notes on them (used the .pdf file without printing to save paper).

In general, I'm not confident at all in my poetic abilities, but I'm sure most of my classmates are in the same boat as me, so that gives me some comfort.