Go with the Flow

I've never been the biggest fan of poetry. To me, it was more or less just glorified caveman talk with a "deeper meaning" that took hours of rereading and thought to find. I essentially just thought of poetry as a more complicated math problem with fewer formulas to solve it with.

This past week, I came across something while reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor that I personally believe will be the first step in changing how I view poetry. Heck, I might even begin enjoying it with this new information.

Before, poetry was a bunch of lines, meant to be read line-by-line, and each line was its own thing. That is still kinda true, but How to Read Literature Like a Professor also emphasized reading the poem through like a normal piece, as if the lines didn't matter, with the only stops being dictated by the punctuation. This was a more go-with-the-flow approach of reading poetry that I hadn't thought to use before. So I decided to try it on a poem, reading it the "old way" first and then reading it as one after. I got some idea of the poem's meaning after the first time through, but to my surprise I got a lot more after reading it through the second time.

In a way, this reminds me of what has distinguished the great NFL quarterbacks from the good ones: their ability to go with the flow and make plays happen when things break down. Sure, staying inside a good game plan is great and will work 70% of the time, but for the remaining 30% when the play breaks down, the best will be able to create something out of a tough situation and keep the drive alive (I made those numbers up, but you get the idea of what I'm trying to say).

Going with the flow when the first idea doesn't work will open up the possibilities when I don't understand a poem the first time through.