breakin the rules

Breaking the Rules

They are many different forms of poems that writers make. Poems are meant to read in order to go beyond traditional form of thinking. The poem “Read This Poem from the Bottom up” by Ruth Porritt is a reverso poem in which you can read the poem from bottom up to top down. This would be consider a free verse poem and yet saying it’s a free verse could be consider an oxymoron to free verses because it must have the same words to read from the top down to bottom up. This poem has all the ingredients to be consider a good poem. The purpose of the poem is to break traditional form of thinking and challenge the narrator to break the rules of how poem can be written.

From the beginning the title of the poem the author says “Read this Poem from the Bottom up”, the author Porritt wants its narrators to take an unorthodox way of reading this poem. As the narrator starts from the bottom of the line the authors writes “and feel what it’s like to climb stairs.” The author acknowledges that it’s something that the narrator has never done or attempted. The second line the author writes “ while trying not to notice the effort/ of moving against gravity of habit,/A force that usually pulls you down,” Porritt desires the narrators to challenge the orthodox way of reading, and not doublethink or challenge the unorthodox way of exploring a poems. The author then states how easy it to read this poem in an unorthodox war Porritt writes “Line by line, to the bottom of the page/But now you’re going the other way/ past the second story”. The author recognizes the narrator just read this with ease, “/to the top of penultimate line” as if the poem is pyramid that once you read all the words at the top their only one point. Porritt then ...

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...o.k. if your go the other way because the narrator is still some how going up, and growing. At the end the stanza finish like it started

“A force that usually pulls you down

Of moving against the gravity of habit,

While trying not to notice the effort

And feel what it’s like to climb stairs.”

This seem to reinforce what he said from the beginning that if you go against the grind, it may be smoother than what anybody would consider difficult .

This poem “ Read from the Bottom up” has every element to be consider a great poem, it inspires to think different the diction of words seem weird but yet it accomplished it point to go beyond a normal point of view and see things further then are. The purpose was accomplished the central theme is challenging to understand, but that was the whole of the poem to challenge traditional thinking and think beyond ourselves.