Thursday, January 29, 2015

Thoughts on Life in Poetry

Poetry allows people to express emotions, experiences, and basically anything they feel like in a creative way and share their thoughts with others. But if you can write about almost anything in poetry, why does it seem like everyone writes about the same thing?

 Shakespearian and Petrarchan sonnets are typically about love. Sonnets describe different types of relationships and varied ideas about love but they all still revolve around love. The more contemporary sonnets that we read did vary more in topics, and there are even examples of the parodies of sonnets, but they are still about some important aspect about life.

There are also numerous poems written about suffering and death, or overcoming some major obstacle in life. There is nothing wrong with the poems having similar topics but poetry is an art form that encourages freedom of expression and writing about the same thing doesn't really seem to fit that idea.

The fascinating thing about poets and their poetry is that they all be writing about the same topic but as people are free to express their opinions and ideas in creative and various ways, no two poems are alike except for the topic. Perrine wrote that poetry is central to existence. When I first read this, I was skeptical; I am pretty confident that I can survive life without poetry. But when you look at the central and common topics of love, death, and overcoming suffering, I can see Perrine's point.

Maybe that is why poems all seem to be about the same thing. Poems describe some aspect of existence because then there is always some reader who can connect with their poem and it can be central to their existence.

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