Education by Poetry

Page 48.  The general point made by Robert Frost in his work Education by Poetry is that you can become close to poetry in only two different ways.  More specifically, Frost suggests that these ways are reading poetry or writing poetry, but only if you have such a desire to do so.  He writes, “ the person who gets close enough to poetry, he is going to know more about the word belief than anybody else knows, even in religion nowadays…every time a poem is written…it is written not by cunning, but by belief” (page 50).  In this passage, Frost is suggesting that only by experiencing poetry, whether it be through reading or writing, but by experiencing it is the only way we can come to know and understand poetry.  In conclusion, it is Frost’s belief that poetry can only be experienced and truly understood by reading or writing it.

            In my view, Frost is right because you can never really understand something, whether it be an experience or a piece of text/poetry, unless you really go through the process of trying to understand it, by reading about it or writing about it then truly thinking about what you have just learned.  For example, you can’t really fully understand someone who went through The Great Depression unless you either listen to them (reading) or you talk to them about what they went through (writing).  Although Frost might object that everyone can understand poetry, I maintain that everyone can if they really think about and try to have their own interpretation and opinion of it.  Have ideas about the text of what they are reading.  Therefore, I conclude that poetry can be understood by anyone if they just learn to have their own opinions and beliefs about what they are reading or writing.