I Don't Get Poetry

I've been meaning to write about this for awhile. I just don't get poetry. I guess I'm not wired that way, or I'm just hopelessly uncultured. Whenever I come across a poem that is written by someone I know, I'm amazed. It's like, wow, how did they come up with such beautiful sounding language, of which I know not the meaning?

I can relate to Monica on Friends. There was one episode when she was dating this dude who wrote a poem about an empty vase. Monica thought it was great, took it literally, and decided to give her guy an empty vase for a present. But Phoebe comes up and says, "Hello! This poem is about you! You're an empty vase. Pretty to look at, but nothing inside." Something like that. Monica gets mad and confronts him. It turns out that he was referring to all American women. ANYWAYS, I feel like Monica sometimes.

The reason why I was thinking about this recently is because my mom and older brother both have blogs, and they sometimes write poetry on their blogs. My mom especially is a prolific poet. When she was here for the first three weeks of Abby's life, she was constantly getting inspired by Abby and posting poems online like crazy. I read some of them, and I just don't get how you put words together like that. Is anyone with me? It must be partly genetic because my older brother enjoys writing and reading poems as well. What happened to me and Jibin?

I can name a few of my friends who are very poetic and writes poetry all the time. I say great for you and poo for me. I'm not jealous necessarily. I guess it's just a world that I don't get, and I'm fine with not getting it. I just have to accept that the fact that I'm not good at EVERYTHING. haha. In fact, I remember on the AP English exam there was a poem we had to read and then analyze it. That was the hardest thing ever. My friend turned to me after the exam and asked something like, "Wasn't that poem about the garden really hard?" I looked at my friend blankly and said, "What garden? There was a garden?" Whoops. Needless to say, I think I got a 2 or a 3 on that exam.