I was interested in this talk after having taken a poetry class during my sophomore year here. The speaker talked extensively about how poetry is tool for keeping language alive and revitalizing it. The only way to grasp the understanding of a poem is to internalize it and really be active in trying to understand it. The best poems need to be taken apart line-by-line and word by word to fully understand the meaning. When I was taking the class, I had some trouble at first because I wasn’t quite sure how to put the words together and how to make sense of some of the jumbled pieces that were considered to be some of the best of their kind. I started to learn that confusion is often a good thing- confusion leads people to think deeper about art and about their selves. Once I started to understand the importance of poetry as well as the purpose, I found myself really enjoying both reading it and writing it. While I thought the poems and the speech was confusing, I guess that’s a good thing!