How to Read and Annotate Poems

If I had to pick three words to explain why poetry is often met with dreaded sighs and exasperation in the contemporary classroom, they would be “read,” “annotate,” and “analyse.” Studying poetry in school is often driven by the need to find examples of as many kinds of metaphors as there are elements on the periodic table, or to justify how a rubber band is symbolic of death, no matter how much of a stretch (pun intended) that may be. At the very core of this issue is the absence of a reason to read at all, and the intrinsic value of poems can be buried by the compulsion to annotate and analyse instead of truly appreciate a poem.