To Shahid.

August Radjoe
2 min readSep 29, 2018

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“The world is full of paper,write to me”

Poetry is often perceived as cryptic messages that lovers with broken hearts write.Nothing could be farther from the truth,for poetry is the purest form of emotion that could be contained in words.I have been writing poetry for the past 4 years,and been reading them as long as I can remember,and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it has definitely been a positive addition to my life,however,I disagree with the writer in notion that Poetry should be taught in schools.

The article in question discusses the importance of Poetry in Schooling.Simmons discusses the importance of poetry in a classroom setting,yet emphasizes that he has been hesitant of using poetry in a classroom,as the analysis of a piece may objectify that piece and reduce it to a mere syllabus in a course.It depersonalizes the poetry,and takes away the emphasis from the soul of and poetry,the depth of a poetry.Simmons makes an excellent case,focusing on how the brevity used in a poem,against the long form of prose,forces the poet to reduce their ideas to a lesser number of lines,and hence this makes a person use brevity.However,I beg to differ.There are more effective exercises that achieves the effect,review of technical pieces for example.Simmons then writes that reading original poetry in a class aloud increases kinship of a class,unfortunately,we have some anti-social people in our society who may hamper the confidence of the students.Then Simmons focuses on how poetry teaches the structure of grammar to the students,thus conducting an intuitive understanding of grammar.I agree to this point whole-heartedly,except that in real life,corporate environment,one rarely needs such a vast and complicated sense of grammar,for example “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks requires one to have an excellent sense of grammar,while also having a history of poetry analysis,or one would discard such classic poetic pieces.

In conclusion,I would like to state that poetry is definitely important,and I am in absolute awe and respect of Mr. Andrew Simmons,and his articles,however,on this one instance I beg to differ with him.Poetry is definitely an important,almost indispensable art,however,forcing students to learn it for the sake of profit may hamper the purity of poetry to a student to whom it is not mandatory.

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August Radjoe

Now: MS CS @ Boston U / Prev: Ignite Tournaments, DeFi Alliance, Persistence, Eth India Co