Understanding and interpreting Poetry

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What is poetry? And what makes it different? According to Webster’s Dictionary poetry is described as the art of writing stories, poems, and thoughts into verse. Poetry has many different parts to it that makes it different; for example rhyme, rhythm, and format/stanzas. In poems feelings and ideas are expressed in fewer words and the techniques used in poems are different as well. Another thing that makes poems a little different is that their meanings are a bit difficult to understand and the language seems to be manipulated in; other words, a poet can create a language of their own. The poems of “When we two Parted”, “A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention”, and “Modern Love” all have the same theme of being broken hearted, but their use of vocabulary’s, emotions, and thoughts are very different allowing the poems to be unique. Therefore, Poems can be interpreted for anyone there is no direct reference as to who. For instance, reading a poem with a known theme and then having the ability to read what the author has written for that theme makes the poem interesting, for their choices of vocabulary and their thoughts are all different. First, in the first stanza line 1of “When we two parted” readers are informed about the separation of two lovers for it says, “When we two parted” (line 1). The separation for these two lovers is accompanied by “silence and tears” (line 2); in other words feelings of sadness. Upon separating, the speaker’s ex-lover who he dearly loved along with their affection became cold and pale, a change representing the sorrow that is taking place in this moment as well as later. It also implies an emotional separation growing from the beginning of their parting. For the speaker says, “Pale grew thy cheek ... ... middle of paper ... ...ht than an actual rhythm. The use of abrupt sentences and fragments gives the poem a generally choppy and even sound which is another way of letting the readers read the fast paced internal dialogue. The poem relies heavily on the associative meaning of a word in addition to the literal meaning; For instance, words such as dismantled meaning negative, robotic and the word; invention meaning feeling artificial, novel; and pity meaning how the speaker has given up. Therefore the tone for this poem is helplessness, tragedy, anger, hurt, sorrow, sadness, etc. Finally, even though these poems have the same theme what makes them different from one another is the choices of words they use, the feelings they introduce, as well as how they introduce them. All poems have a unique way of letting the readers see how they are expressing themselves or what they are writing about.

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