My goals for poetry:

-Pay attention to symbolism, such as the season in the poem
-Understand figurative language
-Make connections to other poems/works of literature

My problem with poetry is always the same. I like to and can write it for myself, but upon reading famous works of poetry, I don't always understand it. It's the words that I love. I love the way words sound...but sometimes they make me get lost in a piece of poetry and not completely catch what the theme or idea is. I also never really pay much attention to the use of symbolism. I read the poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". One example of where I didn't really catch the symbolism was in the third stanza, where it says "I see a lily on thy brow, with anguish moist and fever dew, and on thy cheeks a fading rose..." What I never really seem to fully grasp are things such as the meaning of the lily and the fever dew, and the fading rose on the knight's cheeks. Assuming these are not literal descriptions, I'd like to channel in on my ability to understand the symbolism. Peterson's Poetry