If the poem is so moving that even if you have no experience in that particular setting be it 1920's Harlem let's say. You still are so moved that you can put yourself in that position. That means that the writer has managed to go beyond the personal and touch the humanity in all of us and it's really a blast to read it because I realize how that this does hold true for the truly great poems.
Rita DoveIf our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they canโt imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in Americaโs alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart โ and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.
Rita DoveGoing to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.
Rita DoveMy first advice would be to read, read, read, which sounds interesting coming in a digital age, but it's so much easier to listen to a poem than it is to sit down and actually read it and to hear it in your head and that is something that every poet or aspiring poet needs to be able to do, I think to hear it in their head.
Rita Dove