Poetry in (slow) motion

Poetry escapes me. It seems as if as soon as words form verses and stanzas I lose the ability to fully comprehend them. I absorb myself so fully in the imagery and what it means to me that it seems to become concrete , so opaque that I can’t see through it to find the greater meaning in the poem. My lack of ability to find depth is infuriating . I continue to repetitively speak out in class during our lovely sessions of poetic vivisection, hoping for some sort of validation. Each time i do, however, I find I’m not quite correct. I’d imagine it’s the same sensation a fly gets as it iteratively flies into a window, hoping to get outside but every time feeling the anticlimactic impact of exoskeleton on glass.
However, this is not to say that I don’t enjoy reading it, I simply don’t like the inability to conjure enough understanding to make a decent statement. In fact, I was rather fond of Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias . The relic of an ancient King, with “a wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” is a luridly beautiful image. It seems to say that although he was powerful and arrogant while he ruled his kingdom, in his death he is ruler of nothing, just a rock in a vast expanse of desert. All in all, I just hope to be able to grasp poetic concept so I can further enojy poetry.

_Murry-Uh