Poetry

Hey everyone. Recently my interest for poetry has started growing, but I've been having some difficulties distinguishing between good poets and pretentious cunts. How do I know what is good poetry and what isn't?

If you enjoy it, read it, nerd

Ask Veeky Forums. The ones it recommends are pretentious cunts. Read the others.

Ok, then give me some suggestions

>having some difficulties distinguishing between good poets and pretentious cunts
What the fuck

Keep reading.
Read poetry criticism.
Learn about poetic form, meter, technique, etc.

Read a lot of poetry and try to distinguish it yourself

Read a poem
Did you like it?
>yes
poem is good
>no
poem is bad
>i dunno, kind of
read it again later

l'II start taking notes

Hey man, I'm a big poetry fan myself. Who do you enjoy reading?

James Tate

I love Tate. Try Bill Knott or John Skoyles.

Pound is nice. Pick up some books on early American imagism, and get to know some William Carlos Williams, and Whitman, Lastly get some context about the transition from the sonnet, to the blank verse, to free verse, the history of dominant poetic styles is good to have if you want a frame of reference for things.

Vorticism was a mistake

Don't sleep on HD, senpai.

>I've been having some difficulties distinguishing between good poets and pretentious cunts.

congrats you've gotten to the fun part
there is no difference btw

If it's similar to rupi kaur, it's probably shit.

none of it is good.

bukowski is the least pretentious poet i've read. his books are just sloppy and depressing.

i've yet to read a poem that provokes a pleasureable emotion. but that's probably not poetry's fault. i'm just a cold stone.

but i agree with the popular opinion here. if it somehow makes you wnjoy it, it's good. if not, drop it. don't be a pretentious cunt about it

her stuff is awful on the whole yeah, but this poem gives me feels

What a disgraceful way to waste paper.

pussy

the real pussies are the ones who can't enjoy things unless they're given permission by an austro-hungarian fly fishing tribe

That is dogshit

I appreciate the sentiment too.

I am in a poetry course in school right now and it's very frustrating and boring. Instead of closely studying poets, or forms, we have a new form to breeze through each week and then we all philosophize about love and how we express love sometimes in harmful ways, etc. It's completely unproductive and I wish I was being introduced to cool poems with cool word usage and exciting double-meaning and form but... instead we're talking about personal feelings in a group of 25.

BILLY COLLINS is the old good poet
all else are trash
anyone who doesn't like BILLY COLLINS is a just a jealous poet, upset that COLLINS is the actual end-all-be-all of poetry

lol there's no austro-hungarian fly fishing tribes, dummy xD
also if you can enjoy it anyways, you wouldn't reply
go ahead, read your wacky shitskin qt

Whitman is great, if you're into it
I know he's pretty entry-level, but his poetry just makes me feel good, and i don't even really like poetry in the first place

"To a Certain Cantatrice" is probably one of my favorite poems ever

"Here, take this gift,
I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general,
One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress and freedom of the race,
Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any."

It's dumb, but i just love it, i can't really explain it

pop-quiz
which one am I?

Footnotes are so boring desu

Ur face

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literally what the fuck is wrong with your phone

Im not reading this trash

yeah I'm not sure why that happened

Maybe I'm a pleb, probably am because all the poetry I read is centuries old if not thousands of years old

But whenever I try to read most modern poets it just feels like such a slog and I can't stomach them.
Too much whining and problems that really no one needs to hear about.

I think socialists really ruined a lot of art with this idea that the oppressed classes are "heroic" when in reality they are dreary and have stunted world views most of the time with a small few exceptions.

Not OP, but I've been getting into poetry a bit too. Been reading a lot of Eliot and have enjoyed it, who should I go to next?