Redpill me on poetry. I don't get it. What is the appeal? How do I understand it...

Redpill me on poetry. I don't get it. What is the appeal? How do I understand it? Will my autism forever prevent me from understanding poetry?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=Edu5x0Y6Hho
poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

This is a simple and yet beautiful poem by A. E. Housman, from his collection called "A Shropshire Lad." I assume you're roughly 20, just as Housman was. Does it stir anything within you? Have you ever seen the way cherry blossoms catch the light like snow in the springtime?

Think of how the poem works, first on the level of images like the blossoms. What is it describing? Next consider the "message," if you like. How is the speaker's awareness of his mortality like the fragile blossoms of a cherry tree? And isn't it peculiarly lovely how he juxtaposes the imagery of spring/youth and winter/old age?

The appeal is that it's a very concentrated art form that uses all the elements of language in very deliberate ways. Read poems slowly and out loud, and take the time to think about what they mean, really open up yourself to it. Some research on meter, form, and poetic devices are very helpful, but a lot of poetry is very accessible.
>Into my heart an air that kills
>From yon far country blows:
>What are those blue remembered hills,
>What spires, what farms are those?

>That is the land of lost content,
>I see it shining plain,
>The happy highways where I went
>And cannot come again.

Poetry doesnt describe, but pulls your eidetic memory and synesthesias to communicate with you in a non verbal way. It evokes images and gives you deep feelios.

It is interesting and rhythmic meter that can impart good lessons.
youtube.com/watch?v=Edu5x0Y6Hho

Don't try and understand it. Read about metre and imagery and all that sort of stuff because it will indirectly complement your enjoyment, but when it comes to actually reading poems just do it without thinking. Let the thoughts come to you later after you've absorbed the poetry in a musical, emotional, visual way.

this did nothing for me
some "people" are just subhumans with lesser souls and thus no sensibility

I assume you are talking about yourself

>this did nothing for me
no shit retard

>retard
wow you really are self obsessed, you can't even go three words without talking about yourself

...

awh diddums did the faceless internet man make you cry

First poet I read was a month ago, Rilke. I study it like I would poetry. Maybe there are people who can read a poem and get it in an instant, but going over each line thinking about what it means, looking stuff up I dont understand, looking at what other people have said about it: this makes me not feel like I'm wasting my time reading poetry.

>understand

it is not about understanding it, but about feeling it.

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin.
Ogden Nash

What if you feel absolutely nothing when reading poetry? It's all just random words that don't even go together, there's no plot or characters or anything to feel. There certainly isn't anything 'musical' or 'rhythmic' about it either.

Also the linebreaks ruin the entire thing by chopping up the sentences, it creates a horrid effect while reading it.

>There certainly isn't anything 'musical' or 'rhythmic' about it either.

you're either reading the wrong poetry or reading it wrong.

>there's no plot or characters or anything to feel

Many poems do have characters, and even if it's just a lyric, the poet himself is kind of a character as well. And there usually aren't plots, but they do have progression and structure.

Here, read this. It's written from the point of view of Odysseus who has returned home and yearns to travel more. It's written in clear language and is not filled with opbscure references. The feelings, while strong, are very direct.

poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses


If you really get nothing out this it's safe to say you can give up trying to poetry.

stop reading literature

Poetry = snapshot
Novel = film

Don't read too much into it

The line breaks ruin it. Poems just look aesthetically gross, no one want to read that blocky text that cuts off every few words.

I've read more literature than you ever will.

>Redpill me on poetry. I don't get it. What is the appeal? How do I understand it? Will my autism forever prevent me from understanding poetry?

Now think, could you have said what you meant in a more eloquent way? Perhaps more condensed by more potent and with conviction and delicacy. Who will read the words that you wrote just now? And what if you wrote them in a disciplined, consistent style, with proper rhythm and meter, so that it rolls off the tongue and flows like gentle hills or cascading waves. Suppose you sweetened your meaning in metaphors or communicated the incommunicable in a subtle, profound way, such that the writer himself feels as though he did not create it, but discovered it as a beam of light that graced him from a world he only glimpsed at.

etc etc

Don't be hard on yourself, good (or even average) poetry is one of the most rare things in the world, rarer than any precious stone. But read Milton or Goethe or poetic translations of great works and consider how the experience lends itself to remembrance and appreciation for precision.

Anyone can write "free-form" poetry. Few can turn the unforgiving confinement of meter into a vessel for the sublime. The characteristic of a genius is precision. Prose is a hammer. Poetry is a blade.

probably wrong poetry for you. same with music or movies or books or girls.

> Art lies because it is social. And there are two great forms of art: one that speaks to our deepest soul, the other to our attentive soul. The first is poetry, the second is the novel. The first begins to lie in its very structure; the second in its very intention. One purports to give us the truth through lines that keep strict metres, thus lying against the nature of speech; the other purports to give us the truth by means of a reality that we all know never existed.