Identifying Meanings in Poems
This week we are reading about poetry. I never really liked poetry because I found it difficult to interpret the meaning of most poems and I thought I’d never learn to understand it. So, after high school I never read another poem. Even our English book says it’s one of the more difficult pieces of literature for people to read and understand.
In the English book it tells you about meter, rhyme, and repetition and how those are the tools for critical thinking. It’s supposed to help you figure out the meaning and arguments of the poem. I tried doing this the first time I was reading some of the poems in our English book, but I assumed I still wasn’t being open-minded enough because I still didn’t completely understand them. One of the poems I read was “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Obviously, it’s about an urn, but trying to figure the significance of the urn was the difficult part. In the beginning, Keats is simply describing the urn itself. He implies that even though the urn can’t speak, the story painted on it is much better told than even Keats himself can tell it in his rhyme. He goes on to explain what is painted on the urn such as men pursuing women, a lover serenading his love, and the mass animal sacrifice. The last line of the poem can be construed in many different ways. Some don’t believe truth is beauty. Beauty can fade, but truth never will. And the truth is not always beautiful.
I somewhat understood this poem after reading it a few times, but as Dr. Angel-Cann was reading “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in class I understood it a little better than I did when I was reading it to myself at home. I think reading poems out loud is definitely helpful and I plan on doing that as I write my next paper.