# Does anyone else just not get poetry? Anyone? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 4, 2004, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155 "2004-09-04T23:25:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/41 "2004-09-05T22:23:49Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > I don’t know if I “get” poetry or not. I can read it, and usually understand what the poet is trying to get across. If I apply some mental effort, I can see the metaphors and imagery and whatnot. > > I just don’t CARE. That’s okay. We all have things we really just don’t care about, don’t we? And so long as someone isn’t trying to make me care about, say, college sports, I won’t try to make them care about poetry. I go through times when I really don’t care about poetry, either. I’ve had too much incredibly bad poetry shoved in my face to care about all of it. I’ve had too many people say, “Oh, I’m a poet, too!” and then they hand me some angsty, cliche-ridden glurge that amply demonstrates that they have never read any poem that they didn’t write. The most frustrating thing is the number of misconceptions about poetry. Including: 1. If you feel really strongly about something or someone, anything you write about it will be poetry. 2. You can’t revise a poem without ruining it. 3. Poetry comes from the heart. 4. All poems must rhyme. 5. No poem may rhyme. 6. If someone says your poem needs work, it’s because they’re just jealous. Frankly, anything that will keep people from saying the above things is fine by me, up to and including a revulsion for the artform. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/42 "2004-09-05T22:45:21Z")
> [@mike1dog](#): > > Sorry, I just can’t stand poetry. Every time I hear someone recite poetry, it seems unnatural and phony. Like really bad song lyrics, except there’s no music to distract you from the phoniness. Do you think you will ever see a poem as lovely as a tree? ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/43 "2004-09-06T04:18:44Z")
I think Roald Dahl picked a pretty good pit of poetry for reading aloud, in Matilda. Do you remember the part where Miss Honey recites the first stanza of In Country Sleep by Dylan Thomas? Try it… just try it? “Never and never, my girl riding far and near In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep, Fear or believe that the wolf in a sheepwhite hood Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap, My dear, my dear, Out of the lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood” ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/44 "2004-09-06T05:27:43Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > So, if someone were to try to express what it feels like to be in love, you’d prefer they talk in terms of blood pressure and stuff? Or uses a bit of poetry? “Butterflies in the stomach” is poetry. “My heart is about to burst” is poetry. A poem is just an expansion on such a metaphor, or a series of them, or something entirely else. But since every word you speak is actually a metaphor–language is an abstraction; it’s a representation; it’s not the thing itself–then maybe poetry is more natural than my previous post suggested. Is sheet music for a song a metaphor for the song itself? I wouldn’t say so. Wittgenstein argued that there is a very real relationship between a proposition and the actual objects that the proposition represents; they are fundamentally connected. Any language, whether it be English or sheet music, is abstract and representative, but language can nevertheless communicate meaning in a very specific, concrete way. I would say a poem isn’t primarily for communication, but rather for expression. And some people, myself included, don’t think in this way. We’re simply not designed for it. I have to agree that if you’ve never, ever come across anything poetic, if no piece of writing in this world speaks to you on a level beyond its mere communicative purpose, then something is very wrong. Shakespeare was a badassmofo, as was Dr. Seuss, and something of what they’ve written should strike a chord. But Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss are much more easily accessible than many other poets. One wrote plays, which contain plenty of juicy plot to keep you interested while the poetic genius is going on, and the other interesting children’s stories (with pictures!). A poem that exists without the context of big whoppin’ chunks of plot or easily accessible language and illustrations is a tough thing to wrap my mind around. I try to do it, every once in a while, to challenge myself, but it isn’t natural to the way I think, and it’s very, very seldom enjoyable. The telling of stories with words that flow in a more conversational manner is what works for me, and so that’s what I concentrate on. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/45 "2004-09-06T07:59:58Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > I think Roald Dahl picked a pretty good pit of poetry for reading aloud, in Matilda. Do you remember the part where Miss Honey recites the first stanza of In Country Sleep by Dylan Thomas? Try it… just try it? Which just goes to show that “accessible” means different things to different people… That poem does nothing for me, and it took considerable effort to make it past “hearthstone tales” and not just glaze over the entire thing and go straight to the OP’s state of > [@](#): > > I’m trying to suppress the eye rolls and pretend to listen intently & meaningfully, but what I’m thinking is, “uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” OTOH, the [Pablo Neruda](http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6638&poem=195870) poem from the other thread worked…and worked much better than the prose version of the same sentiment would have worked. I think a lot of people my age were harmed by “poetry units” in elementary school, when they taught us many of **jsgoddess** ’s misconceptions, including “anyone can write a poem” and “your poetry is wonderful,” which it wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![buttonjockey308](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/46 "2004-09-06T10:13:54Z")
First, I think rather than the dummies book, take a look at [The Idiots Guide to Slam Poetry](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1592572464/qid=1094464370/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-9482066-3172936?v=glance&s=books) by Marc Smith (So What!) Poetry Slams are to poetry what rock and roll was to music. Revolutionary. I’m a slam poet, and I’ve been at it now for a while, (been writing even longer), and I find that there’s little to ‘get’ about poetry. Either you hear it, or you don’t. It’s an instantaneous medium for art and artists, that lets you either feel the emotion of what the poet is saying, or not saying, right away. Likewise, as a poet, you get access to an instant barometer of your own ability. If you’re too pretentious, snotty, or just plain suck, the slam audience WILL let you know. Perhaps, **levdrakon** you’re just not in the right places, hearing the right poetry. Take a read of Marc Smith’s stuff here. It’s a touch more ‘accessible’ and will give you some insight into the whole movement. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/47 "2004-09-06T11:15:22Z")
Oh, please, please, please read: “We Real Cool” (subtitled “The Pool Players”) by Gwendolyn Brooks [http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1233](http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1233) It’s very short. My students liked this one. But read it aloud really slowly – kind of like you have a late Saturday night drunk going. A very, very good poet, John Ciardi, would agree with you about not getting the “meaning” of a poem. He said that "a poem should not mean, but _be_. Some of the best poems are often like abstract paintings – your mind plays with the words in a poem the way that it plays with color, balance, texture, etc. in a painting. And if you find one painting in fifty that knocks your socks off, you’re lucky. Do you always understand lyrics in a song? After a while, you sort of bring your own meaning to them. The older I get, the better I “incorporate” the lyrics to “Midnight Rider” into my life. But I can’t say that I _understand_ it even yet. I just know that it connects with me on an unexplainable primal level. BTW, I also love poetry slams. They make me want to write again. And they demonstrate how unstuffy poetry can be. And if you still don’t like poetry after giving it a fair chance, then no big deal. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/48 "2004-09-06T12:01:48Z")
> [@](#): > > **Already in use** : I guess my taste in poetry tends towards that which illuminates the true absurdity of our existence by creating phonetically ridiculous word combinations, therefore subverting conventional modes of meaning, but conveying something at an abstract level. I hope that doesn’t make me sound too much like a chain-smoking postmodernist. No. e. e. cummings was damned good at doing almost that. I wouldn’t say that his word combinations were “phonetically ridiculous,” but they were unusual choices that left me wishing that I had thought of them first. I’m not certain what you mean by “conventional modes of meaning.” Poets have been “unconventional” for a long time. I rather like some of your basic structure. Can you do it without the vulgarities and references to bodily functions? It’s not that it can’t be poetry with those words used. (I don’t believe in “dirty” words.) It’s just that when there is so much of it, the vulgarity becomes the focus. And that’s okay too unless that becomes the focus of _every_ poem. Then it becomes a little constipated. Just a personal opinion. I’m no poetry critic. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/49 "2004-09-06T15:17:00Z")
> [@buttonjockey308](#): > > I’m a slam poet, and I’ve been at it now for a while, (been writing even longer), and I find that there’s little to ‘get’ about poetry. Either you hear it, or you don’t. Not directed at you, BJ, but this is why I hate slams. I lived a couple blocks away from the Green Mill in the eighties and nineties (Marc Smith is an asshole, btw, which may color my judgment). I started going to the original slams, before they’d spread anywhere else, with a couple of very close friends who were actually professional poets: they’d been devoted to it for long enough that they were finally, both of them, approached by two different publishing houses–one of them a bigname New York publisher–to publish their work in actual books–not just zines or chapbooks. Anyway, I learned a lot about poetry during the 6 or so years I spent a lot of time with these guys. I came to know a good number of prominent Chicago poets, and went to hundreds of poetry readings with them. We went to the slams a few times, but then stayed away in disgust. A poet with a beautiful, lyrical, sublte poem would read, and get stony silence from the audience. Then a blustery beerhead would read a blue poem about sex and baseball and win the slam. This happened at every slam that I went to. It was pretty clear that Smith was trying to dumb down the art of poetry, and it made me feel really bad for these wonderfully talented poets who would get no response because the slams were geared toward poems about baseball. I’m all for accessibility, but I also think it’s important that education remain valuable: that some human endeavors require some personal effort to understand and appreciate. This is not elitism, in that I’m not advocating a hierarchy of art and keeping people out. It IS elitism in that it recognizes the value of extra effort and talent, and hopes that people will want to include themselves, through equal effort and attention, rather than surlily insisted that poets meet them on their terms. I love some of the poets who do reach a wider audience; I dislike this recent cultural wave of slam: it’s anti-intellectual in the worst sense, and it marginalizes subtle and serious artists. ---
**Author:** ![Fatwater\_Fewl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4491bb/32.png) [@Fatwater\_Fewl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fatwater_Fewl)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/50 "2004-09-06T16:21:02Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Ok, this is good to start with. I like the sound of “imagists.” I know what imagery is. I get that! > > Apparition. Know what that is. Faces in the crowd. Gotcha. Ghost, crowded metro staton. Petals. I know lots about plants so I totally know what petals are. Wet. Black. Ok, so I’m thinking it’s raining and it’s dark out. Bough. What did my friend tell me recently, it’s pronounced “buh” or “bah” like in “thought” but not “boh” like I used to think. But anyway, it’s one of those… like a pine “bah”, like what you hang on your door during the holidays. So we’re talking about a bunch of faces, a crowd of people at a metro, they look like a ring of decoratively arranged dead plants, made of black petals and they’re wet, and they’re a ghost or something. gah! > > By now, if someone’s reading this poem to me, I’m two paragraphs behind and I haven’t heard anything else they said. If I’m reading it, well… I’m confused and I’m probably just going to start skimming and tell everyone later it was a cool poem & I really liked it. :rolleyes: > > So what was I supposed to do? How should I have read it? What was the poem about again? You did get it, as far as I’m concerned. That’s basically how I’ve always seen that poem: white faces being petals lying limply, as if after a rain, on the wet, black bough that is the dark-clothed bodies of the crowd. (For me, I think, what really makes the poem work so well is the almost-rhyme of crowd and bough, because when I read it and get to “bough” I bounce back to “crowd,” then my mind starts oscillating between the two words, and the lines they are part of, sort of driving the two lines together into one image.) _Pssst_, **Zoe** , wasn’t it [Archibald MacLeish](http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/188.html), not John Ciardi, who said, “A poem should not mean / But be”? ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/51 "2004-09-06T16:31:19Z")
I thought it might clarify my understanding of poetry to post the last poem I wrote, several years ago: quagmire dust in boxes deepless, darkless, blackless, bloodless victorious vertigo ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/52 "2004-09-06T16:33:00Z")
sorry, hit submit when I just wanted to preview. Anyway, that poem is an attempt to communicate the feeling of lying awake at night, trying to find a way out of despair. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/53 "2004-09-06T16:40:00Z")
Ooh, just found the LAST poem I wrote, just a couple years ago. This was an exercise in controlling the colors of imagery: Grayscale gulls, tattered rags of disintegrated squadrons, Hover clumsily against the the heavy Northwest sky. Below them, the disorienting wind teases Tufts of lint from each gray wave And scatters them across the Sound. They grow and gather to ring the horizon: A crater’s edge of snowy stone mountains. A lone gull tears at scaly carrion On the cold concrete at my feet. The sun, great liar, finds me out, And the gull’s dead yellow eye considers me For half a heartbeat. ---
**Author:** ![Ruby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/13edae/32.png) [@Ruby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/54 "2004-09-06T19:16:55Z")
Count me in as one of the people that just doesn’t “get” poetry. I have a good friend that writes poetry and I can read her work and feel so much angst and pain. She says, however, that “It’s not all sad.” Could’ve fooled me. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/55 "2004-09-06T19:52:40Z")
I get some poetry – T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost among others – but most of it just sucks. I think the ratio of suckitude to good stuff is much higher in poetry than in other arts – it’s just too fucking easy to string some words together and call them a poem, and if people call you on it, you’re a misunderstood poet, and say, there are a LOT of them, some of them pretty well known. If as the famous quote goes, 90 percent of everything is crap, then 99.999 precent of poetry is crap. Just too much shit to be worth plowing through to get at the good stuff. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/56 "2004-09-06T20:32:06Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > I get some poetry – T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost among others – but most of it just sucks. I think the ratio of suckitude to good stuff is much higher in poetry than in other arts – it’s just too fucking easy to string some words together and call them a poem, and if people call you on it, you’re a misunderstood poet, and say, there are a LOT of them, some of them pretty well known. That’s exactly what I mean when I mention how many myths there are about poetry. Excelling at any art is hard, but for some reason people seem to think that poetry is an exception. It’s really annoying. ---
**Author:** ![mike1dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@mike1dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mike1dog)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/57 "2004-09-06T20:49:49Z")
Sorry, I’ve looked at all the links of accessible poetry, and it’s even worse than the stuff I had to read in high school. Instead of being bored to tears, I was bored and rolling my eyes at what they wrote. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/58 "2004-09-06T21:06:02Z")
> [@mike1dog](#): > > Sorry, I’ve looked at all the links of accessible poetry, and it’s even worse than the stuff I had to read in high school. Instead of being bored to tears, I was bored and rolling my eyes at what they wrote. Then you don’t like poetry. That makes you firmly in tune with the general sentiment of most Americans. I guess I read this thread and shrug. The people who say they don’t get poetry seem dismissive of it, which is fine, but you won’t get things you’re dismissive of. Not “getting” it seems to be asking for a remedy. The only remedy to not getting poetry is to make an effort to understand the gettable poems. But if it’s a matter of not liking poetry, there isn’t a remedy, nor should there be. ---
**Author:** ![eno801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c2a13f/32.png) [@eno801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eno801)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/59 "2004-09-07T05:40:21Z")
count me in as another that just does not get “it”. i feel like Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango in the Blue Casket reciting or listening to that beatnik poetry. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155/60 "2004-09-07T06:02:29Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > If as the famous quote goes, 90 percent of everything is crap, then 99.999 precent of poetry is crap. Just too much shit to be worth plowing through to get at the good stuff. This is pretty clear evidence that you have no real interest in finding the jewels in the rough. Which is fine; but I wish you would express it in terms of your interest, rather than making such sweeping statements about an art form that simply holds no interest for you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-just-not-get-poetry-anyone/263155.md?page=2)