Why Poetry Cannot Be Skimmed Summary

Poetry is a unique form of literature. Poetry uses the aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language. To evoke meaning, poets use various forms word manipulation; phonaesthetic, sound symbolism, and metre are often used. The word “phonaesthetics” derives from two Greek words, phone which means, “voice-sound” and aesthetics. Sound symbolism is the partial representation of the sense of a word by its sounds. Metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a line or verse in a poem. In Jessica Jopp’s poem, “Why poetry cannot be skimmed” these word manipulation tools are used to convey the importance and seriousness of poetry. Jopp opens the poems saying, “The barn was in the Netherlands, in a field where fierce night wind caught the straw as if to fuse the winter stars to their coldness.” Jopp paints a vivid picture of the setting of the poem; the realism creates a scene that doesn’t seem so foreign. “A farmer, woken by the sound, knowing his animals would be

The seasons turned into years, “the wax melted as the years progressed and other horses resided in the stalls, and their tail strands were added to the aging threads.” The farmer decided the strands of hair he had before wasn’t enough, he added more hairs to his already “aging threads.” The sound that soothed the farmer’s ears was now encased in a rope. He was able to string the rope to form a sound, similar to that of a violinist. “Then another generation worked the land and waxed the horse-tail cord again, and in turn when it caught that century’s light, was spun into amber.” The farmer left the job of tending to the horse’s hairs to those who come after him—the next