For me, poetry is a personal thing. I don’t claim to know how to write poetry, it’s just that sometimes that’s the form my words come out when trying to express myself.

I don’t claim to understand most of poetry either. Ask me to interpret a poem and I’ll likely give you a blank stare. I’m not the type who intuitively understands what a poem is trying to convey. One reason may be that I read so quickly. My eyes scan the words, losing all the pauses and nuances the author meant me to feel. I have to consciously slow down my reading, line by line, when I want to read a poem. Even then, reading slowly, I tend to pause and go, “Eh?” and try to reread the poem. It’s rare that I find a poem whose words and imagery really speak to me, and I feel a flash of insight, and a sense of kinship with the author. For suddenly I understand the poem perfectly, and even if I can’t explain it, I *feel* it inside me.

It’s usually poems by Pablo Neruda and some lines by E.E. Cummings that really speak to me.