Poetry (in my somewhat unpopular opinion)

Ah, poetry. A thrilling literary art that helps writers express their true artistic and emotional intent. An art that has a history of multiple poets creating beautiful works of art on paper.

You might expect me to go on and on about me describing poetry and my passions regarding poetry. You might expect me to ramble about different poets and how they inspired me to dedicate my life to poetry for all eternity. You might expect me to define poetry in its simplistic terms to feel poetry in its “true form”, whatever that might be.

And that’s where you’re wrong.

You see, I’m a poetry hater, not a liker. I’m a Grinch for it, and there is no persuasion that can change my mind about my strong distaste for poetry. And here’s why:

Think of writing like painting: you find the frames and borders of where you want to start painting. Your palette is full of colorful painting and the mind and imagination take your input in and your painting absorbs it all. All the creativity, all the design.

You start small by drawing a dot. Then a line. Then a curve. Then a streak.

Your tiny shapes begin to multiply as you focus on your complete painting and your visible streaks reaching this goal. You draw landscapes and towers and bushes and flowers and the entire profile of the set of characters in the Arcane series. You paint what you think.

Now, you decide to paint again, but this time, you need to draw a 4 by 7 in. landscape width with slight hues of cadmium yellow or galactic zinc or fiery red with a slight dash of whatever and draw something that takes up the center of the painting in a 5 in. radius with the scene representing ½ love, ¼ drama, and ¼ octopus.

“I’m sorry, WHAT?” you ask yourself.

You could try drawing by following these requirements for your painting, but in the end, is it really what you anticipated to draw? Nope.

Similarly, with the thousands of limits and requirements for your poetic writing from the guidelines to write down odes and pantoums, your thoughts aren’t entirely attached to the paper you’re writing on or in the computer you’re typing. There is 0% of personal creativity in your literary work. Zilch.

And, you could argue that there are free verse poems you could write as well that don’t require any specific meter or rhythmic pattern, but you might as well just write a story if you’re writing a free-verse poem.

In fact, because of the limit of creativity that is framed onto the paper you’re writing or the computer doc you’re typing, poets often stump readers with what they mean, especially that darn Willliam Shakespeare. (Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good historian and all, but his poetry is still stuck in the corner of my head somewhere and it’s not sinking in.) The poets seem as if they’re writing in an entirely different language beyond my understanding.

I also think that the education system shouldn’t rely entirely on poetry in the aspects of literature. There are also other styles of writing that literature could cover as well.

If we learn poetry, why can’t we also learn newspapers or posters or anime fanfic articles?

Well, that’s all the dirt I have with poetry. This opinion of mine isn’t that popular but it’s not that unpopular either- in that everybody would disagree with me on this topic. I know some people who would be head-over-heels fans with Shakespeare and some people who would burn books and articles on poetry.