How I fell in love with poetry

Missing Feelings — realjema

I don’t know what you’ve been feeling

looking at you I can tell you need healing

Cut too deep now my heart is bleeding

I know and hope I got this power in me

The only thing I got from you was the billing

It went wrong because my mind went missing

This is just a few of the many poems I've written so far, I’ll be honest I don’t actually like poetry that much, I’m stuck at the blurry place between poetry and music. Despite so many artists having wonderful poetic lines in their songs, they aren’t considered poets despite the fact that their lyrics could all be considered poems, and this is legitimate because if musicians are considered poets then that will be a total abuse of the genre which will instantly make all other poets irrelevant. A poet could take 1 minute or years to come up with a very wonderful poem but musicians are releasing music on a much more consistent basis most of which aren’t good enough to be considered poems or do have too much repetition and copyright infringements, so considering them as poems will not only discredit all the millions of people who dedicate their lives to literature but will also open the genre to much more scrutiny and invalidation, it's just easier to not consider musicians as poets.

I fell in love with poetry through the music I listen and the wonderful lines found in their lyrics. Not only do they make sense, rhyme and have intricate meaning, they also bring up deep emotions and feelings whenever I read them. Like I said, not every artist or song can be considered poetry, but once you are capable to identify those poetic lines in those songs, it makes it all the more gratifying to listen to them, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I wouldn’t have imagined myself writing poems or let alone enjoying doing so, but it's become who I am now and most people who follow me on my social media often get surprised by the poems I write.

What I love about poetry

Whats poetry?- definition: literary work in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.

In the same way music elicits certain emotions in you, poetry even takes that much more further to elicit not just emotions but reflection, focus and concentration. Think about how you feel like dancing when a specific song comes up or when you feel like crying while listening to a sad song, a poem can take you through all those emotions all at once and way more intensely. Reading through a poem, the combination of words, the tone, the rhythm all work in unison to make you feel exactly the state of mind of the writer and that's exhilarating. What's even amazing is that, just by reading lines from a book, you go through a rollercoaster of emotions and a poem can make you feel any kind of emotions, something songs are limited in doing to some extent.

I can’t really convince you as to why poems are wonderful, but once you discover that one poem you fall in love with, you are going to follow in love in with the genre. A concrete example is the poem of Amanda Gorman — the hill we climb which really shook the whole world, just the few words of a very young girl were enough to touch the hearts of millions across the globe. How is that even possible, what could she have possibly said to impact so many persons? She just read a poem, a wonderful one at that. That just goes to show you the power of literature and how it impacts lives, and really summarizes a mountain of emotions in just a couple of lines.

I feel like I’m not a poet

Well, I think I align more on the artist side of things if any and even though I try to classify my writings as poems, I think they are more of lyrics than poems. Poetry is much more complex and intricate, I definitely didn’t study much of literature beyond what I did back in school so I fear taking up that title of “Poet”, I know it isn’t just as simple as that. It will be like me considering myself a formula race driver just because I know how to drive cars. Nevertheless, I enjoy writing the poems so I’m going to keep doing it and hopefully I can finally decide on which side I want to fall on, either the artist side or the poetry side. I’ve already searched for some popular poems and even the best ones out there are usually difficult for me to understand let alone feel anything, that's when I realized that even in poetry there are still many genres and it hit me that it is the sad and sorrowful types of poems which really touch me the best. Feeling another person’s sorrow through his words has a specific feel to it, even though I don’t personally have the same issues as the author, he is still able to strike on my empathic cord.

In the same way there are many genres of music, there are also different genres of poetry, you just need to find the ones which speak to you the best, is it the motivational poetry, emotional poetry, joyful poetry or poems about pain. Anyone you are looking for you can easily find and really fall in love with, think about poems just like the longer versions of all those quotes we like looking at every day.

What makes poetry unique

One of the characteristics of poetry is that it is a unique language that combines and uses words to convey meaning and communicate ideas, feelings, sounds, gestures, signs, and symbols. It is a wisdom language because it relates the experiences and observations of human life and the surrounding universe. It is also a vehicle of thought, feeling, and spirit dressed up in words which are often very subtle, vague, mysterious, and have several layers of meaning. In fact, poetry can explode with meaning. The more you read and reread a poem, the more this becomes apparent. Poetry can reveal many things to a reader, but it can also conceal many things as well.

The reality of poetry is often encompassed in mystery. Because poetry is often wrapped in mystery, its language seems very spiritual at times, and the human experience of it is like deep speaking to deep. Words themselves often mean something very different from what they say. For example, we use images in words all the time to convey a thought, such as “It’s raining cats and dogs,” or “I’m so hungry, I could eat a cow.” People who read the words know that you are using figures of speech and the words are meant to convey more than their literal value.

Conclusion

You should definitely check out some of the best poems out there and discover some emotions they elicit in you, trying to figure out their meaning is a wonderful journey which puts all of your being to work. Check out some of my poems here. I could recommend you lots of wonderful poems such as;

• The Hill we Climb — Amanda Gorman
• Lord Byron, ‘She Walks in Beauty’
• Acquainted With The Night — By Robert From

Thanks for reading

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