I've been really trying to get into poetry. I've read little bites of all the greats, even a couple longer poems.
I'm not a stupid person and I can definitely tell there's something to this whole poetry thing.
But for the life of me I cannot seem to love it or to grasp it. Poetry is, on the whole, so obscenely cryptic it leaves me feeling more frustrated and confused than joyful and enlightened.
I'm starting to get the feeling that my skills as a reader just aren't up to speed to be able to read poetry. I'm aware of things like meter and rhyme scheme, metaphor and other symbolic devices. Yet I can't seem to gather all of these observations into anything coherent.
One begins to feel hopeless and lost reading "great poets" and coming away without any apprehension at all, worse still becoming very bored in the process. I'm open to starting with something easier.
tl;dr:
who/what are the easier poets/poems? How do I into poetry?
pic related. Every time I try to read her, she refuses to give me anything I can grasp.
I've tried memorizing some poems and it certainly helped (a lot), but I still find most poems frustrating and too difficult.
When I look at whole books of epic poetry I have the thought, "Seriously, fuck this. It takes me two months to understand a verse of Hart Crane but Shakespeare wrote tomes, and I will never be able to read him"
Jacob Peterson
Have you tried Bukowski? Some aren't big fans of his subject matter, but the pieces themselves are pretty easy to grasp and sometimes really amazing.
Jason Wilson
Somewhat related but how should I read epic poetry? I read through Paradise Lost, but should I reread it all throughout again or skip some. Is it really worth sitting through the end of book two with Sin and Death to get the the opening of book 3?
Ian Carter
I disagree with that advice. You juste need to find that one poet who will change things for you, and work from there.
James Barnes
couple things:
read Blake Read Blake READ Blake READ BLAKE don't read female authors ever for any reason
Cameron Walker
Eh... Dickinson, Pizarnik, Bachmann, the list could go on, I guess.
Lincoln Fisher
Not understanding is part of it. Just go bit by bit, trying to understand individual lines or verses and building from there. Connections will be made eventually, or maybe they won't. Just keep reading.
Chase Gonzalez
Romantic poetry is less ambiguous. Have you read Keats' odes?
For Dickinson I think there's a lot of importance in the dashes she uses. What's not said. Frost uses dashes the same way in home burial, to get a clearer sense of what I mean.
I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
