Poetry - I just don't get it!

I’m doing a poetry class as part of my post-graduate studies. I know most of you would rather eat your own hair than do poetry, but I’ve always kind of enjoyed it in ignorance. I have read a bit of e.e.cummings, Robert Frost and I’ve even given Beowulf and Dante’s Inferno a go, among others. I enjoy them and have never felt a need to analyse or examine the form, because quite frankly I never understood how some of it can be called ‘poetry’.

I’ve also had a go at writing a stanza or two. One I remember clearly (and I now know was sh*t, I still have it somewhere) was a little number about a man called Jock who drank a bottle of Hock while looking at a hole in his sock. I was eight and writing by fading light ‘cause I’d been sent to bed early for some forgotten misdemeanour. Further attempts have been laughed at (not ‘cause they are funny) and generally ridiculed by all and sundry.

So…when given an opportunity to study ‘Writing Poetry’ I jumped at the chance.
Well, two weeks in I still don’t get it. Worse still, I have to write 1500 words about a poet and his poetry, which has been published in the last 10 years by the 22nd August.

The problem, I don’t get it! There seems to be no rules to some of the stuff. I was reading a perfectly logical little number relating verbs to cooking lastnight (3 stanzas of 6 lines) when at the end was the seemingly throw away line, all on its own which said ‘the boiled egg curdles the bacon’. Or some such nonsense.

Somehow I have to find a way to write an intellectual essay about it this poem in two weeks. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

(295 words)