Reading Poetry

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.

Other urls found in this thread:

keats-poems.com/poems/odes/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Spend more time with less poems

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"

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.

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?

I disagree with that advice. You juste need to find that one poet who will change things for you, and work from there.

couple things:

read Blake
Read Blake
READ Blake
READ BLAKE
don't read female authors ever for any reason

Eh... Dickinson, Pizarnik, Bachmann, the list could go on, I guess.

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.

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.

garbage, weak, pretenders. Read Blake. Blake makes all female poetry look like the swill that it really is. women are excellent fashion designers, interior decorators, florists, musical performers, singers, can be decent actors, mothers, homemakers etc. Genius? Nope, have never seen it.

COME BUY COME BUY

I’m familiar with Blake’s work - no reason to act so pedantic (despite the obvious trolling). 18th century mysticism is long gone man.

I don't know how to read it, literally. I'm never sure if I should read it like a sentence or actually pause after every line break. I feel like a lot of poems make more sense if you just put them in normal sentence format.

>mysticism is gone
right which explains why people think that domesticated pseudery from hack authors and poets is acceptable. Only men could have ever kept that spirit alive, there's no female authors even vaguely like Blake. Or Stirner or Nietzsche. I wonder why? Why could that be? Why is it that there was no Rosa Luxembourg before Marx? Why no female abolitionists before slave abolitionists? Why no feminists before Jewish emancipationists and christian universalism and male humanists? Oh that's right, because women are followers and produce nothing of note that isn't derivative.

Hahah, nice effort I must admit.

Are you reading poetry in English? That would be why you can't get joy or enlightenment out of it. That's why Shakespeare is considered the best in the world, he made English sound good in verse

I don't care about the others mentioned, but you severely underrate Dickinson. Must be you've never read her or are a diehard contrarian.

Anglo defending the only english-language poet posted, not caring about the rest, blaming the other anglo reader. This fucking board.

That's a great Wallace Stevens quote. I will try Keats' Odes now.

Maybe we can have a readalong???

:)

keats-poems.com/poems/odes/

Definitely need help with this one:


Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old-sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

>Elysium=Hades?
>It's about drowning?

‘They toil not, neither do they spin.’
One morn before me were three figures seen,
With bowèd necks, and joinèd hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp’d serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.

How is it, Shadows! that I knew ye not?
How came ye muffled in so hush a mask?
Was it a silent deep-disguisèd plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower:
O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
Unhaunted quite of all but—nothingness?

A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d
Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d
And ached for wings, because I knew the three;
The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name;
The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
And ever watchful with fatiguèd eye;
The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek,—
I knew to be my demon Poesy.

They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
O folly! What is Love? and where is it?
And for that poor Ambition! it springs
From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit;
For Poesy!—no,—she has not a joy,—
At least for me,—so sweet as drowsy noons,
And evenings steep’d in honey’d indolence;
O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,
That I may never know how change the moons,
Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!

And once more came they by:—alas! wherefore?
My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
Tho’ in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
The open casement press’d a new-leaved vine,
Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s lay;
O Shadows! ’twas a time to bid farewell!
Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.

So, ye three Ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
For I would not be dieted with praise,
A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more
In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is store;
Vanish, ye Phantoms! from my idle spright,
Into the clouds, and never more return!

I'd love to give you a more elaborate answer, but I have to read a play by Alfieri right now, so all I can say is:

1. start with the poems of WH Auden and Robert Frost;
2. there's a CD that comes with recordings from all of the great poets, like Tennyson, Browning, Pound and others - listen to it and learn to read like they read, specially Dylan Thomas;
3. keep doing it until you start to like - poetry, in our day and age, is as acquire a taste as one can possibly imagine (only contemporary classical music is harder to get into);
4. if you enjoy it, listen to Dylan and Leonard Cohen - despite what people might say, they can serve as an introduction to the poetic function of human speech.

I will give you a three more advices:

1. enlarge your vocabulary, which is usually done by reading and reading and reading;
2. read Robert Graves' The Greek Myths;
3. read a general history book.

Do that, and most references in classical literature will become clear as water to you. I agree Hart Crane is obscure (one shouldn't start with him), but writers like Homer and Milton shouldn't really be difficult.

Also, if you think Shakes is difficult, you should see Dante, hehe.

Bye and good luck. I hope you learn to enjoy poetry eventually.

> advices

> >

post one of her good poems, i’ll give you 12 hours

Not well versed with poetry, but I think this was sponsored by the Mermaid Tavern franchise.
Oh, and Elysium=Paradise.

I'm a poetry beginner too, like OP, and I've seen Frost recommended before as a beginner-friendly poet--but is he really? I've always had the feeling that he is only deceptively simple, that there is some sort of subdued esoteric meaning lulling there beneath the surface. There's no chance of breaking through, for me, yet. If I were to find a piece of commentary or critical work that would explain it away, that still wouldn't work for me. The beauty is in letting it seep through to you, or part of it, or even finding some that wasn't there or may or may not have been, or is only for you.
I've found the romantics more open, and even guys like Whitman, Kipling, Houseman and Yeats, though I may well be deluded in thinking I understood them, especially the latter. But Frost--if you'll allow me one more preposterous opinion--is too simple for me to get.
Oh, and the same feeling I get reading Dickinson.

I find it a slog to read old poetry but I like modern poetry.

>18th century mysticism is long gone man
lol. That alchemical gnostic garbage is still here. It’s just become Settled Science. We’re all made of dead stars. We rose from self generated slime out of the primordial abyss, shifting through many forms, ascending to a conscious state. We are the universe observing itself. Our destiny is to return to the stars.

The thing is, everyone believes that garbage now. Only it’s insisted that this retarded pseudo-mysticism is “reality” and there’s no such thing as the mystical.