State of The Planet

I definitely found the poem by Robert Hass, “State of The Planet”, the hardest reading we have had yet. I have never been a real big fan of poetry, I find it too wordy and somewhat unnecessary at times. In this particular poem, there were times when I began to think I understood what was going on and then two lines later I would feel lost again. Excerpts such as: “In all the ways that all the shapes on earth are multiple, complex; the philosopher Who said that the world was fire was also right- Chlorofluorocarbons react with ozone, the gas that makes air tingle on a sparkling day. Nor were you wrong to describe them as assemblies, as if evolution were a town meeting or a plebiscite. (your theory of wind, and of gases, was also right and there are more of them than you supposed)” Make me wonder why this information is really relevant to what we are reading. Could someone explain to me how this adds to the poem? I feel like I’ve always been taught not to include unnecessary information when writing, and then I read something like this and wonder why it is different for poetry. If there is something I am missing someone please feel free to inform me of it, but I don’t get the point. It could be that I just don’t have the same appreciation for poetry as other people, which is okay, but I just wish that I didn’t have to get annoyed trying to read something this long when I don’t even get the point of the poem, you know what I mean? Anyways, I’ve been learning a lot in this class so far, so hopefully this assignment will be the same way. If not though, I will just have to do my best to suck it up and get through it with a smile.