Any tips for getting into poetry? Every time I pick up a book of poems it just seems like pretentious phrases grouped together to sound deep.
Any tips for getting into poetry?
Any tips for getting into poetry? Every time I pick up a book of poems it just seems like pretentious phrases grouped together to sound deep.
Read it out loud, listening to the sound of it.
Don’t make pauses when you go to the next verse. Pause with commas and periods, like in regular reading.
I like Blake’s The Tyger, try with that.
Sonority is important in poetry. Rhythm as well and you sort of break the rhythm if you make pauses between verses.
Start by looking up the definition of pretentious in order to make sure you know what it means. Then, pick up a cheap, used copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry and read a few poems by authors you've heard about. The Romantics are generally relatively fairly accessible, so try some of Wordsworth's shorter poems, or something by Keats. Robert Frost is a more modern poet, but his work is known for being accessible as well. If all that fails, try reading secondary literature that teaches you to understand poetry. Mary Oliver has a short one called something like "The Poetry Handbook." Ultimately, though, you just have to read it.
Also listen to this guy.
Mary Oliver’s Handbook is excellent for people who don’t quite get poetry. If you read that whole book you’ll have a much better understanding and appreciation for it.
Thanks for the advice, I'll check out the Mary Oliver book first and then read the poems that have been suggested.
Wrong way round tbh. You MUST to dip your toe in before you start thinking about analysis. There’s a whole rest of your lifetime to ruminate on the words you’ve read, to try and breakdown the meanings etc.
Here try these, they’re not long, they’re easy to read and they’re amazing.
Again, there’ll be time aplenty to read about poetry down the road -
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52829/a-dream-within-a-dream
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/159365/twelve-songs-ix
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43845/so-well-go-no-more-a-roving
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44468/bright-star-would-i-were-stedfast-as-thou-art
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44885/annabel-lee
And also these two poems:
it's always tacky when women change the font and the color of every word
Poetry is the lowest form of creative output.
Read it out loud as the other anon said and read it slowly. Poems are not puzzles but you won't always 'get' them on the first read, keep going through them and it'll come to you.
Here's a good one, read through it a few times, see what you can find in it.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening
It's the highest you cretin
This, honestly. The adage, “ you might be a poet and you don’t even know it” is true, because any retard could write a poem. Most of it is operated by higher sources for reasons of propaganda or money laundering
So true besty
You have a perception of poetry that is distorted by extremely recent developments in literature and culture. Read some older stuff and try to understand how both poetry itself and the popular perception of it have changed over time (Romanticism/Enlightenment being one watershed point, plus Modernism and Postmodernism). Specifically, think about how literature itself actually began, the issue of what its primary purpose is/was in terms of form/style/aesthetics vs. content/ideas, how the place of poetry in culture relates to political/metaphysical assumptions. Read what critics and writers in the past wrote about poetry, either in general terms or about specific poets/poems.
I think the stuff other anons have said in this thread is also very good advice (the ones actually giving advice, not the retard).
I've posted, or wanted to post, something similar to this so many times, I'm gradually refining my method. I think posing it as questions is more productive, because it's an attempt at summing up realizations that took me a long, long time to fully arrive at.
That entire paragraph will put off anyone wanting to get into poetry m8
I can see why you'd say that, yeah. "Read some older stuff" is the most important part though, and it's basically the same as what others have said. I'm not saying "you have to understand all this stuff to enjoy reading a poem", I'm mainly just trying to get across the idea of "if poetry seems confusing/pointless to you, the problem isn't necessarily with you, there are a lot of background factors that contribute to this".
Personally I think that the difficulty for a modern person of really seeing poetry as it's meant to be seen is just an unavoidable feature of the world and it's better to acknowledge it than not - it's there and it will filter people no matter how much you try to simplify everything and meet them where they are (and I do respect the attempt to do that, I'm not that much of an elitist).
Skim. Don't waste your time trying to understand stuff you don't like, just read fast and take note of what sticks out to you. Use anthologies to get an overview.
>just read fast
Don't do this
Don't divorce my words from their context you homosexual. I'm telling him not to waste his time deep reading poems he already doesn't like from the first line.
>Don't divorce
What if his wife cheated on him?
At least he had sex I guess
>reading poems he already doesn't like from the first line.
A poem can seem not appealing at first but turn out to be great by the time you finish it.
Reading a poem can be a little meditative experience.
If you have time to waste that's great. It's better to get to what you love the most, faster, and focus on that.
How is it wasting time if you end up loving the poem in the end ?
>If you have time to waste
We’re on LULZ, mate, we all do.
I would say it's also important to realize that there is a lot of poetry and only a very small amount of it is good. Even the great poets usually only have a couple good ones. And with long ones it is usually only parts or effects within the whole that you will like. (but then sometimes that makes the whole poem worth it)
I like to treat it like finding an author's best novel, then going back to earlier ones that are maybe not perfect, but you can see the signs of what is to come.
>And with long ones it is usually only parts or effects within the whole that you will like.
I think a statement like this has to be made with caution. Obviously there are climaxes of aesthetic and dramatic effect, but if it's a unified whole then each part is necessary and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Try Paradise Lost.
>Every time I pick up a book of poems it just seems like pretentious phrases grouped together to sound deep.
Avoid anything Modernism written in the 20th century like the Bubonic plague, because that is what your statement most applies to.
Start with the Romantics, Milton, Pope, Dryden, and the Elizabethans to get an idea of what proper poetry looks like. The key to enjoying poetry is to understand how meter works and what you can do with a metrical pattern. Once you understand that, you can get more creative with your rhythm and expression.
Poetry served the same purpose music did before music became commercially accessible. The lyrics to many old folk songs songs, ballads, and operas for instance were composed in meter, hence the lyrics to a song were technically also poems, which is why you'll often detect a rhythm when reading a poem.
When people advise you to "read a poem out loud" to find that it has a rhythm, they are telling you to scan the poem. Once you're able to scan poems and as soon as you're familiar with the various meters (composed of units called prosodic feet) and how to set words to them and play around with them (playing around with meter often takes the form of substitution), you can start writing your own poems.
To get used to all this though you just gotta read and keep reading.
Poetry is fucking gay that’s why. Check out Gitanjali though, that’s actually good.
What makes a line pretentious? Is it possible that there is significant overlap between what you call pretension and what poets consider to be genuine, intentional effort towards making a line as beautiful as possible? Maybe you are just not someone that is into what genuine poetry is trying to do.
using this thread to put out my question.
Which poems and/or poetry books from your native country do you consider the best and would you suggest to read?
Have a look at Gerard Manley Hopkins, very unique, I love his alliteration.
Any books on how to write poetry? All the technicalities of poetry counting and coming up with stanzas etc? Is this also language dependent?