So asking for a friend, if I wanted to really start enjoying poetry who are some good poets or poems to read?
I love poetic languange in prose its the bees knees I love all sorts of structure and choice of punctuation and flow but when its removed from any story I get left feeling cold.
T.S. Elliot was an easy entry point at least some of his stuff not just because it involves cats.
That guy who left himself in Flander’s Field seems like an idiot so nothing like that.
Also how to talk about this stuff as in the vocabulary and search terms to learn fast.
That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand under his head.
That’s Yeats and that seems VERY promising even if I don’t really know what he’s getting at (assume a man).
Despite mentioning Elliot and Yeats I’d particularly like to further Cary Nelson’s aims of broadening our horizons and discovering marginalised poets e.g. non-white, female, outsider voices.
I suspect that many of us “get into enjoying poetry” (or at least verse, if you want to make a distinction) as children, when we’re exposed to the likes of Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, nursery rhymes, etc. Poetry for adults is out of fashion nowadays, at least as popular entertainment for the masses.
Different people like poetry for different reasons. You might want to look into narrative poetry: poetry that tells a story. Googling narrative poetry should bring up plenty of examples.
As a published poet, I’d like to point out that it’s how the reader feels and how the poem affects him/her that’s important. Trying the figure out what a poem “means” is like trying to read the poet’s mind. It means whatever you think it means.
Get a copy of the young poet’s work that was read at Biden’s inauguration. Read it, Then listen to her read it. Brilliant, moving, and something to remind us of our common humanity.
I may add that to really get into enjoying poetry, it is amazing to know the historical context in which the poem originates.
I have often heard that the poet satisfies a real need when he writes.
Knowing that the french poets of the Decadent movement refuse the excessive run toward progress and industrialization can help us to share the interior discomfort they manifest through poems.
Knowing deeply that the hate against Napoleon is the reason behind the spread of german Romantic poetry style is helpful to enter the poets mind and enjoy their work
This was a hugely influential book, and contains hundreds of carefully selected poems from the period 1250 to 1900 – the greatest poems of the greatest poets though the centuries.
Was gonna nominate that’n myself. Wonderful, wonderful book.
Also, don’t discount the joy of writing poetry, specifically as a tool to understanding it and enjoying it. Just sit and scribble out some doggerel. It can be as bad as you want. The point is that you’ll gain an insight into the process of creating verse. “Poets” aren’t “other people.” They’re us. We’re them. Even a naughty limerick counts!
A few years ago I started just going to poetry readings in my city, even though I didn’t really know anything about poetry. A lot of it was blah, but some of it was incredible. Stuff like Morgan Parker, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Tommy Pico is really powerful in person. I found hearing it read aloud really more affecting than reading it. I started browsing the stacks at a local bookstore and found more from there. Richard Siken’s Crush is also really moving.
If you don’t mind translated poems, Wisława Szymborska’s poems translate well. (Back in college I did a number of translations of her poetry in a class I took.) She is a Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1996. Her writing style is very accessible. When my children get old enough to start working on poetry, I’ll use her as an example.
This brings to mind one of the answers on musician Nick Cave’s excellent The Red Hand Files where he answers any and all questions from fans.
In answering, “What is the song ‘Rings of Saturn’ about?” he begins:
Dear Lisa,
There is great danger in asking a songwriter to explain their songs – or at least to make the assumption that their interpretation is in some way more valid or true than your own. This is simply not the case. I believe the fan often has a deeper understanding of a given song than its creator. Sometimes, I feel that I am the last to know what one of my own songs actually means. Sometimes, they take many years to reveal themselves. With that in mind, as you’ve asked, I will tell you what I think is going on in ‘Rings of Saturn’. I only hope my answer does not diminish the value of the song for you.
I had my own experience of this, being asked to help translate a haiku from Japanese to English and requiring a word that expressed both the ringing of a bell and the fact of a butterfly existing.
Rumi seems great with all the spinning round right round, religious, really but describing life as she is lived.
Men should not recommend Bukowski to men, or vise versa, and I read the post office one and pulp but come on man, it’s a lot of man that needs to come on, and man should just come on rather than indulge in that.
Thanks and I shall keep reading.
That big poetry colection I’ve got that and it’s great you can skip the shit and find the goods then go back and realise the shit is the goods.
