Persuasive Writing Assessment Task: Why Read Poetry?

Sam Ioannou
Nov 3 · 6 min read

Poetry is beneficial because it improves your reading, writing, and speaking. Speaking poetry aloud is rhythmic and it can enhance verbal communication. Poetry uses language, poetic techniques and imagery to connect with the reader and create pictures in their mind. Poetry is open to interpretation, and your imagination and creativity is used to find the true meaning when something doesn’t immediately make sense. Poetry also requires critical thinking, which is important because it allows people to make logical decisions, and poetry is definitely more meaningful than the useless information on social media. But, useful information is a lot more important than the playfulness of writing, a clever rhyme, or the interplay of words and rhythm, which is essentially what poetry is about. ‘And half the time it doesn’t even rhyme anyway.’ This is why I’m not always 100% for reading poetry. You should only read poetry if you want to.

‘I hate poetry’ by Paul Dallgas-Frey.

Here are some legitimate reasons to hate poetry. People hate poetry because the techniques and styles in poems like rhyming, repetition, onomatopoeia, alliteration, simile, metaphors and hyperbole don’t help to convey a better message because a simple description is a lot more useful and informative. The true meaning of the poem is often uninteresting and not worth the effort to fully understand it, or the true meaning is redundant and it has nothing to do with your life at all. At least with a boring movie, you can easily find the meaning which is for you to critique. People shouldn’t have to read poems that just don’t work for them. Also, your imagination will probably never be as good as the writer, so you might not like poetry because your imagination is limited as it’s based on what you already know. Poems that you can see in your imagination are good, but it’s easier and more entertaining to watch a movie as the visualization work is already done.

These aren’t the only reasons why, here is ‘6 Reasons Why People Hate Poetry.’ by Rebecca Roach.

Books are worse because you can only design the set with the words you know the meaning of.

Poetry just doesn’t interest some people. It’s not that poetry is too hard, too old or too repetitive. You shouldn’t blame someone who puts in effort to read and understand something that doesn’t excite them enough for them to do that work in the first place. If poetry doesn’t invite you in, it just doesn’t work for you, which is why you shouldn’t have to read it if you don’t want to. Not all things worth doing are fun, and there can be value beyond entertainment. For example, people push themselves through gym workouts to lose weight. People read non-fiction to expand their knowledge. A poem can be valuable for some because of its numerous benefits, but poetry can be pointless if someone simply wants to gain knowledge and learn more. What’s the point of poetry for these people? A poem also isn’t going to have as much information as an informative text, where the information is explained in a simple, straightforward manner.

Here’s an article mentioning value beyond entertainment: ‘Why You Should Read Poetry (Even If You Think You Hate It),’ by Annie Neugebauer.

We also shouldn’t read poetry the way we do in most classrooms. We are taught to commit all of our focus to deriving meaning from tone, rhythm, context, and word choice that we never have time to consider how the poem makes us feel. Poem of the day is an exception because we’re not assigned it and we don’t have to analyse it. High schools should be encouraging students to embrace poetry in a less methodical manner. Poetry is an art form making it ineffective for poetry to be taught like another unit of grammar. It shouldn’t be just observed, measured and reproduced. It should motivate us to reflect on things we have felt or wished we felt within our lives. You Should Read Poetry To Feel, Not To Analyze. Reading poetry should be intuitive. If poetry makes you feel this way, you should read it! Realistically though, most students have to approach the text with a range of analyses to complete, and in that case, I hate poetry.

‘You Should Read Poetry To Feel, Not To Analyze. by Methas Kornpipatna.

People who dislike poetry shouldn’t have to read it if they don’t want to. It’s unfair to make someone put in effort to read and understand something that doesn’t excite them enough for them to do that work in the first place. It makes no sense to read poetry if it doesn’t resonate and compel you, especially if movies do a better job at that without the extra effort or the limits of your imagination. The way we read poetry involves a scientific process where we read step-by-step and break down every single word and beat, and it brings along a great deal of anxiety in trying to find the meaning of a poem, which we don’t even care about. High schools are ruining poetry, but if we stop forcing people to read it methodically, we’ll have more people benefiting because they want to read poetry.

I really hated writing this, ‘If only a bomb would explode you to bits!’ Here’s a poem about ‘Homework’ by Faith Long.

Bibliography:

Mecham, S. (2019). Are High Schools Ruining Reading for Our Kids?. [online] Book Cave — content-rated book deals to your inbox — Fabulous free and discounted content-rated ebooks. Available at: https://mybookcave.com/are-high-schools-ruining-reading-for-our-kids/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Trent, A. (2019). How to Find the Message or Theme of a Poem. [online] Pen and the Pad. Available at: https://penandthepad.com/message-theme-poem-1812.html [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Bellanca, P. (2019). Ending the Essay: Conclusions. [online] Writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu. Available at: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Delistraty, C. (2019). Ben Lerner on Why So Many People (Rightfully) Hate Poetry. [online] Literary Hub. Available at: https://lithub.com/ben-lerner-on-why-so-many-people-rightfully-hate-poetry/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Kornpipatna, M. (2019). You Should Read Poetry To Feel, Not To Analyze. [online] The Odyssey Online. Available at: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/you-should-read-poetry-to-feel-not-to-analyze [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Peterman, A. (2019). How to Write a Concluding Paragraph for a Persuasive Essay. [online] wikiHow. Available at: https://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Concluding-Paragraph-for-a-Persuasive-Essay [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Roach, R. (2019). 6 Reasons Why People Hate Poetry. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/trubadour-for-poems/6-reasons-why-people-hate-poetry-6155a24be599 [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Neugebauer, A. (2019). Why You Should Read Poetry (Even If You Think You Hate It) | Annie Neugebauer. [online] Annieneugebauer.com. Available at: https://annieneugebauer.com/2014/04/07/why-you-should-read-poetry-even-if-you-think-you-hate-it/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Mahoney, B. (2019). What’s the point of poetry?. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@blairmahoney/whats-the-point-of-poetry-45ae1347a3a3 [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Dallgas-Frey, P. (2019). I Hate Poetry. [online] Biblestoryguy.com. Available at: http://www.biblestoryguy.com/wimps.html [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

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