My "History" of Reading Poetry

My first introduction to poetry would have to be when I first entered kindergarten. I remember one of my first poetry books that I read; it was called Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. I enjoyed learning about poetry, but at that young age I wasn’t aware that I was becoming familiar with poetry. I also enjoyed listening to the rhymes by Dr. Seuss and to this day I can remember a few lines from Green Eggs and Ham. But, through time I have learned that there is more to poetry than just a few rhyming lines.

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When I reached middle school I remember, that we began to write poems rather than just reading them. Many of the poems that we were assigned to write were topics of our choice, and the teachers would only tell us the type of poem that they wanted. For example, when I was in the 8th grade our teacher assigned us a haiku poem and I chose to do mine about the flowers in nature and their natural beauty. Another poem that was given to us was free verse poem, and I enjoyed this one the best because it allowed me to express my self without having constraints on my form of writing my poem. At the end of my 8th grade year, we collected all our poems and created a poetry book. I can truly say that “my poetry book” was a great learning experience for me.

Poetry is more difficult to me now than what I thought it was when I was back in elementary school. I have to approach poetry differently than I do with any other type of literature. Part of this different approach could be because, I find it very difficult to comprehend and sometimes even the form or style that it is written can be confusing. But, now I am attending college English classes that “dissect” poetry. I can still read poetry and enjoy it but it has become more complicated for me to quickly understand the meaning of the poem. Even through all my struggling to understand poetry, I still enjoy reading, learning about, and sharing poetry.