How Do I Love Thee – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I adore this poem. It means so much to me. On a personal note, it enraged me in poetry class (in which the curriculum is: “What is great poetry?”) when the professor dissected the poem and declared why it was not “A Great” poem. >=(
I mean isn’t poetry supposed to be personal. On some level, isn’t it unethical to tell someone that a poem that speaks nothing to them, gains them nothing of emotions and bores them is a great poem simply because it can continually breed menial ideas that still produce no personal meaning to them of the sort?? He has such a pretentious attitude toward things, and rather than take insight from his students on what a poem means for them he declares what HE feels the poems are saying, what HE feels the poem means, and how WE are mistaken. I understand you are there to teach us, but you are crossing the line into persuading us into taking your opinion as fact or else we are wrong. One poem I know specifically he got the meaning of completely twisted (due to him over-thinking it) but I had no clout to speak against him because I am only a student and he’s a poetry professor. So I silence myself in class. Finding myself disappointed, antsy, and longing to escape due to the enormous input I wish to include but don’t out of fear of embarrassment.