Reading

Why Reading Poetry Makes You 3x Smarter (+ Other Benefits)

by Helen Ng on Oct 17, 2024

Why Reading Poetry Makes You 3x Smarter (+ Other Benefits)

As we already know, poetry can convey ideas and emotions that can have a profound effect on our life.

The art makes up a cup of a culture’s more preserved writing, where you get to feel the same emotions, bring up the same spark and relate to the poet regardless of how old it is.

Today we will be wondering if poetry makes you smarter.

Considering how you are surrounded with high vocabulary, unknown concepts, and deep emotions, poetry has shown unprecedented results in making you smarter. Therefore, poetry is necessary to gain a complete understanding of the world and the underlying benefits that can’t be conveyed in any other piece of writing.

Are you really smarter when you read poetry?

Poetry can open up your mind to ideas that remain within us but are challenging to understand. It stimulates your memory and helps develop deep problem-solving techniques that will inevitably make you smarter.

Unlike any other type of book, poetry lets you live the life of poets who probably have more experience and wisdom than you do. With each emotion, you get a better comprehension of the text that you manifest in your life.

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Coming to the practical reasons why reading can make you smarter is that poetry has the potential to expose you to advanced vocabulary and linguistic structures that you can use in your day-to-day to be smarter in the way you convey and perceive information.

Other than that, by looking at the world through someone else’s shoes, you shift your perspectives and naturally develop the skill to see a situation from every angle.

Other reasons why poetry can be beneficial for you

If you think the fact that poetry can make you smart is good enough to help engross you to its endless benefits, wait till you find out what else it can yield its readers.

1. Makes you empathetic

A study conducted in 2006 states that stronger empathy skills lie to be poetry readers than otters. This is because poetry is fiction that goes in-depth with the sorrow, happiness, struggles, and excitement of the poet. As a result of this, you drag yourself out of your worries and start considering the feeling of others around you.

2. Improves memory

Poetry memorization helps imprint a beautiful language into our hearts. When we tend to like poetry, there are solid chances of us memorizing and making the most out of it. This is especially true for kids as they learn poetry in English classes. Studies have also shown excellent long-term health benefits of memorizing poetry as it lowers the risk of Alzheimer’s.

3. Reading poetry improves vocabulary

I’m sure we all have been there: you read the poetry for the first time, and it is difficult to grab the overall idea as you can’t understand the words in the first place. However, once you start to read more of this material, you realize how easy it is to comprehend poetry.

So what changed?

As we read, you get to learn about an entirely new set of vocabulary that you never knew existed. Therefore, your mind gets trained to consume information to understand with such complex words and sentences. This also allows you to express situations from different viewpoints while being a clear table to verbalize them.

4. Helps us celebrate

The most joyous moment can never be expressed through balloons or gifts. There is something quite magical about poetry that helps you resonate with the words and deliver your message in the best way possible. Thus, reading poetry can be handy to write your own poems on specific occasions to show your gratitude towards your loved ones.

5. Writing poetry is therapeutic

According to innumerable poetry readers, since poetry is an excellent way to self-reflect, it can be a great way to heal from past traumas. Grief is undoubtedly the most painful emotion we could ever experience, but reading this poetry can be your door to relief.

Many of us cope with such strong emotions by diverting our focus to rather happier aspects of our lives. However, by reading poetry, you get to pause, take your moment to feel the pain truly, AND find the courage to get out of it most healthily. It is also said that poetry readers are more likely to be better writers than people who don’t.

3 most beneficial poems for you

Don’t you know what I mean by that? Here are the 3 most beneficial peons that have moved millions of people worldwide.

1. The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glow’s worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

2. “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves, no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

3. “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?” by William Shakespeare

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

Why do you love poetry so much?

The reader who generally enjoys reading poetry loves it because of many reasons. However, the root of the likeness remains in the effective use of language.

Prams have been known to be appreciated because of the emotions it evokes. Another thing that can be liked is the sound of it. Poems come with their own rhyme and rhythm that makes such complex words sound beautiful.

Pick up any poetry, and you will start to feel vivid imagery with only the first few lines to create an impact on your life. However, this also depends on the type of poems you read. Some are narrative with interesting stories to tell; some poetries paint a picture in our heads.

Therefore, we like poetry so much because of the carefully selected words that are artfully combined with emotions to cut through the surface-level information and plant those words in your heart.

How does poetry make you feel?

Studies have shown that full-term fetuses increase their heart rates when they hear their mothers reciting petty this means humans’ brains naturally lean towards poetry.

Perhaps this has to do with the sound of these powerful words, which makes everyone feel “something.”

This also indicates that even if we aren’t avid poetry readers, our brains always respond positively to it. This is mainly because of the succinct details that make it easier to inside the writer’s mind and see his eyes.

As a general rule of thumb, poetry requires a poet to be highly disciplined with how he crafts the words and gets them on paper. The number of words and unique selection is the key to make or break any poetry here.

Once you start to read, you get to have a snapshot of what the poet was thinking while writing that. You aren’t simply reading a few lines on a piece of paper; the world growing inside your brain is much more profound and significant to impact your life highly.

When you start to feel this way, it can be impossible to deprive yourself of its unprecedented benefits that you can cherish forever.