I have recently become obsessed with a poet who goes by the name of Pablo Neruda. Since last summer, I've been collecting his poems in my bookmarks which I usually find on StumbleUpon by chance. Every once and a while I like to go through them and read all of them. I'm not really one of those "deep" people who sits there and mulls over a poem, stanza by stanza, line by line trying to uncover some profound meaning within the words. And that is exactly why I love Pablo so much - he uses simple words and ideas to get his point across. They're not muddled up with complicated vocabulary or weird unnecessary formatting - it's just simple. Beautiful, even. Most of them are about love and his mushy feelings towards some lucky girl out there. But he has a funny side too - poems that go under the category of "Ode To..." ranging from Ode To The Onion all the way to Ode To a Large Tuna in the Market. I have to say though, one of my favorite poems by Pablo is titled "Your Feet". For everybody that knows me, this may come as a very extreme surprise. I have an intense foot phobia and can't even stand the sight of them much less a poem written all about them. But it's just so simple and darling, I can't help but love reading it...
When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
Wasn't it wonderful? I especially like the last sentence starting with "But I love your feet..." which I never thought I'd catch myself saying! It's lovey-dovey, yes, but just enough to not be annoying. Anywho, I like poetry. Sometimes I wish I could be so talented as to write it myself but then I think it might just be one of those things that for me, writing it would take the fun out of it. Not to sound like some insightful cheeseball, but it would take some of the mystery out of it. Like who is the author writing to? Anybody? Or perhaps it's just like John Mayer's "Love Song for No One" and it isn't being written for anybody. Or (especially Pablo) why the heck was he writing odes to vegetables? There's just something about poetry that isn't as obvious as a book or newspaper article. There is something about it that makes it funner (yes, I know it's not a word) not knowing where it's going to end up or what the author meant by it. I find it ridiculously annoying that while learning about poetry in school, teachers always seem to try and dissect it word by word, searching for that "deep" meaning. But what if it isn't there? What if the author just wanted to say how he loved someone's feet simply because they brought her to him? It's nothing more, nothing less than that. There is no way a teacher can get inside an author's head and drill him or her on what they have written. There is no right or wrong answer. I think the poem can be taken for what it is by each individual reader and that's not something that can be graded. While it is important to teach what poems are and how there are many different ways to write them, it is unnecessary to try and turn them into an exam.
Thanks for reading :)
Love,
Rachel
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