I hate poetry. Okay, hate is a strong word. I strongly dislike poetry. I’m trying to read John Donne for class tomorrow, and it doesn’t make sense, and I’m so frustrated. I actually just went on the school website to see if I could drop the class. But I know I shouldn’t give up that easily. Still. Some people look at difficult poetry as a challenge, and I’ve tried to see it like that, but it’s not working. Even when I finally do understand it (either by myself or because the teacher or someone explained it), I don’t usually like it any better. It’s not some feeling of accomplishment. I just feel like I’ve been gypped of hours of my time spent trying to understand something that he could’ve said in a much more straightfoward, succinct manner. I know I sound terribly unliterary by thinking that poetry is a waste of time (and I don’t think all of it is…poetry can be very beautiful and also not give me a headache..there are even some of the Donne ones I like all right), but there it is.<\/p>\n
At least when I had to read Gerard Manly Hopkins last week for 19th and 20th Century Lit, I knew that soon, we’d be moving on to novels by Wilde, Woolf, Forster, etc. In the Donne class? Nope. Four more weeks of Donne, then the rest of the semester on other metaphysical poets who promise to be just as obscure. Kill.Me.Now.<\/p>\n
I thought writing this down would make me feel better. Strangely, it didn’t. Maybe I’ll go upstairs and throw pillows around for a while to vent my frustration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hate poetry. Okay, hate is a strong word. I strongly dislike poetry. I’m trying to read John Donne for class tomorrow, and it doesn’t make sense, and I’m so frustrated. I actually just went on the school website to see if I could drop the class. But I know I shouldn’t give up that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[484,79],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":217,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/class-registration-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":99,"position":0},"title":"Class Registration Blues","author":"Jandy","date":"February 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"So people are already turning in pre-registration slips for next fall, even though registration doesn't technically begin until the middle of March, because of the trouble we had getting into classes this semester, because of the now-much-firmer 12-person-per-class cap. But I have no idea what to take. The list of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":108,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/howards-end\/","url_meta":{"origin":99,"position":1},"title":"Howards End","author":"Jandy","date":"September 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Thing number one: I am so so so so so so glad to be doing novels in 19th-20th Century Brit Lit now instead of poetry. (This doesn't help my Donne problem, since that's a whole other class, but still.) Thing number two: Howards End is one of the best novels\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":199,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/william-cowper\/","url_meta":{"origin":99,"position":2},"title":"William Cowper","author":"Jandy","date":"January 28, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I feel like writing something, for whatever reason, so I guess I'll write about William Cowper, since I'm giving a presentation on him tomorrow. Of course, the time I spend writing about him here would probably be better spent working on my handout and stuff, but hey. I've got like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":106,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/september-recap\/","url_meta":{"origin":99,"position":3},"title":"September Recap","author":"Jandy","date":"October 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Just to say, school really gets in the way of movie-watching. So expect pretty pathetic review recaps for the next couple of years, apparently. Even the films I did watch, I seem to have been highly distracted while watching them, so I hesitated to even mention them, but I did\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":249,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/wow-i-do-like-poetry\/","url_meta":{"origin":99,"position":4},"title":"Wow, I DO Like Poetry!","author":"Jandy","date":"March 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"My European Romanticism professor had an interesting anecdote today. This is not an unusual occurrence--he has many, many wonderful anecdotes. There should be a book of just his anecdotes. This isn't even one of his more intriguing anecdotes, actually. But we were talking about how German Romantics theorize about poetry\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":285,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/ulysses-to-read-or-not-to-read\/","url_meta":{"origin":99,"position":5},"title":"Ulysses — to read or not to read","author":"Jandy","date":"March 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I volunteered at the university's poetry festival yesterday (which is chaired by my Harlem Renaissance professor), and listened in on one of the speakers, who was not reading his own poetry, but lecturing about poetry. Which I find more interesting. He had some interesting things to say about poetry vs.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}