Loving and Hating Poetry

There are tons of people in the world that love poetry. These people love it so much that they have created poetry societies, awards specifically for poems, and museums dedicated solely to the art form. Although many people, including some very intelligent people, seem to categorize poetry as unimportant, abstract, and possibly a little boring. I think that the reason why our opinions on poetry are so black and white is because people either choose to be patient with poetry or not. To really appreciate a poem you have to read it through several times to get all the juice out of it. A novel, on the other hand, can be read through once and the reader can come away from it feeling as though they have a connection to the book and have gotten to know the characters really well over the course of the week. Poetry can be easily forgotten sometimes, because readers can begin and finish reading minutes. The speedy poem reader may not have gotten very much from the read and dismissed it as something too abstract to make sense of. The people who don't give it the time classify it as unimportant, maybe claiming that no big idea of importance can come from only a few strings of words. Poetry asks a lot of the reader, because there's not much filler for the mind to process what is happening or for the reader to "read" while his or her mind is focussed elsewhere. Poetry demands the reader's time, attention, and their own thoughts to fill in the cracks. Those who aren't patient enough to meet the demands, dislike poetry, and those who are patient, enjoy it very much.