Does anyone else just not get poetry? Anyone?

Cafe Society
21

I’ll have to admit to not getting it, either. Of course, if I had ever been exposed to some good poetry, as opposed to whatever that drivel is they force upon you at school, I might have a different opinion of it. I was going to go into that other thread, and post my favorite poem, “The Fat Budgie” by John Lennon, but compared to what’s already been posted there, people would hate me for it.

I’m not saying that I want to be exposed to good poetry! I find the whole genre to be boring and somewhat pretentious.

But it’s OK, I don’t get art, either.

22

I would really like you to post that. I don’t know it. Anyway the thread asks for your favorite poem, not what you think others will like.

Please.

23

That was adorable fishbicycle! It made me giggle. Link
It reminded me of a Pink Floyd song, Bile

24

If you liked that one, see if you can find copies of “In His Own Write” and “A Spaniard In The Works.” They contain not more of the same, but if you"get" John’s mastery of wordplay, they are hysterically funny. I discovered the books in high school. I would be sitting there reading, laughing my ass off, and somebody would ask me what was so funny. So I’d read them the source of my amusement. Every single time, I was met by that stunned silence and deer-in-the-headlights stare of total incomprehension. Oh well, their loss!

25

Hi, my name is Mach Tuck (the support group says, “Hi Mach!”), and I don’t get poetry.

I’ve always found poetry annoying. English was my favorite subject in school, but whenever we did poetry I found myself thinking, “Why all this verbal tap dancing and symbolism? Why don’t they just SAY what they want to say?!”

I skip over poems when passages appear in a book I’m reading. I’m the typical “music person” rather than “lyrics person”. The meanings of my favorite songs still escape me after decades of listening to them.

However, all may not be lost…

*Question: Does Dr. Seuss count as poetry? If so, I can claim there is one form of poetry that I enjoy. *

26

I’m almost afraid to enter the thread but, well, I’m a poet and I still don’t get some poetry. Some of it just isn’t particularly “gettable” the way prose is.

As someone mentioned upthread, read a poem aloud. Now, some poems aren’t really going to be improved by doing that because some poets, frankly, don’t care about sonics and don’t work to make their poems sonically pleasing. But that tends to be the exception rather than the norm.

What to read to begin to “get” poetry? Well, there isn’t anything wrong with reading someone like Dr. Suess or Ogden Nash. Rhyme and wordplay is extremely common in poetry, and Dr. Suess especially is a master at it. If you really want to work at it, start paying attention to the words he makes up, what words he rhymes and what he doesn’t, what sounds strike your ear as being “funny” and what sounds don’t, how he can sometimes suprise you with an unexpected word and sometimes surprise you by using a word you should have expected but didn’t.

Read his works aloud. Listen to the rhythms. He’ll have reoccuring patterns. See if you can predict the next line’s pattern based on the one you just read. See how often he surprises you, and how much the humor might be influenced by that surprise. (Ogden Nash is the master at this.)

Most of all, be patient. Yes, poetry is rarely the most direct method of communication. Just like a painting is less direct than a photograph. Why would someone spend so long painting a portrait when they could simply snap a Polaroid? Because the painting captures something that the photograph can’t (or, at least, might not). Poetry is the same way. It allows a certain freedom, a certain latitude, a certain use of sonic tricks like rhyme and meter that aren’t quite as accessible within prose’s rulebook. Much of poetry is about imagining an atmosphere or getting a feeling about things that maybe aren’t that easy to describe in direct terms. The point isn’t, usually, what the poem ends up saying–what it all means–but how it says it, and how you respond to it.

And you know what a perfectly valid response is? Snoring. Eyerolling. There’s no reason everyone has to put up with obliqueness and elusive meanings if they don’t want to. If it just seems pointless, well, that means it really is pointless for you. Don’t sweat it.

Just buy my book. :wink:

27

Look! I can make up words, too!

Recurring. Recurring. Gah.

28

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?

29

Read the link.

30

:wink:

31

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.

32

I’m reading the link. I’m only about a third of the way through. I’m already mentally exhausted. But I promise I’ll read the whole thing.

33

You’re totally welcome in this thread. I want some poets to tell me how I should be reading and listening to their work, 'cause otherwise I just ain’t getting it, and it’s too late for me to go back to college & take a class.

34

I DETEST most poetry. I just can’t take it seriously.

There are some things I like, though. I like John Lennon’s poetry and his more nonsensical lyrics, and I like the surrealistic lyrics of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Come to think of it, I like lots of song lyrics, but very few of them would stand alone as poetry without the music. Maybe a few of Paul Simon’s (at least the ones from his S & G period) would qualify. As for poetry by “poets,” I like Ogden Nash, Edward Lear, and Lewis Carroll. Poe is pretty decent too. Dadaist poetry is nice.

But I know my own personal favorite is my poetry. I’m sure everyone else finds it ridiculous, and I guess I do too, because I feel that the universe can only be explained in absurd terms.
Links:
Ode to Baal-Peor, written in about 30 seconds to prove to a poetic dorm-neighbor of mine that I could do that shit too. I don’t think it was very convincing.
Lyrics for my groundbreaking opus Zombie Flapjack.
A pseudo-quasi-para-sonnet written and rejected from a student publication at my school. I think it’s quite possibly the greatest poem ever composed in the history of H. sapiens.

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.

35

This is a Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. I believe it offers some direct, poignant insight into the motivation for poets and readers of poetry.

Poetry is the nonbeing’s desire for incarnation. The language of the distant heart at the core of all being. It’s a birth of thought and being… a moment captured…Apart from all other writing in it’s emotional indellibility.
I believe that everyone can “get” poetry, you just haven’t found the poem that speaks to you and resonates clearly. I’m sure some of you that claim distaste and no understanding for poetry enjoy music and maybe even have a favorite lyricist or a favorite song…well, that too is poetry and therefore you too have enjoyed poetry in one of its many forms.

36

THat’s a start. It IS unnatural, in the sense that’s not the way most of us talk. But it’s not supposed to be a transcript of a conversation. Try again, acknowledging that it’s unnatural, but go with it; think of it as unnatural in a good sense, like a Mozart symphony or a painting by DaVinci.

If I’m trying to get something that I don’t like, sometimes I’ll *pretend *that I like it and try again. This doesn’t always work, but sometimes it gives me a new perspective; a slight curve to the lense through which I’m seeing it.

A lot of poetry isn’t trying to sound like natural conversation; it’s trying to recreate, in words, the kind of nonverbal thought and abstract imagery that goes on constantly in everyone’s mind. It’s using words as paint. A painting isn’t the thing itself (Ceci n’est pas une pipe–it’s using tools: oils, pigments, a flat canvas, etc.–to try to create a personal impression through imagery. Poetry is often the same thing, only its tools are words and sentences. It’s trying, often, to paint a picture, or reproduce an emotion, in your mind.

37

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.

So some guy wants to paint me a mental picture of a leaf falling on a snow-covered mountain meadow or whatnot. So? What’s in it for me? Hell, a quick google image search will get me a PHOTO of a leaf falling on a snow-covered mountain meadow.

“Um, yeah, you sit here and read that poetry out loud. I’ll be over in the corner watching TV.”

Call me a Philistine, I guess.

/semi-tongue-in-cheek, but generally sincere

38

What exactly is poetry?

For the most part it’s a bit of a “I know it when I see it” deal… with a major characterisitc being that poetry sucks. OTOH, I’m inclined to include the lyrics of most of stuff on the radio as poetry. Not poetry of the same type as Shakespeare’s sonnets or anything, but still poetry.

Poetry of the “Ah, this is poetry!” variety is, IMO, the work of people trying to be clever. Not people being clever, mind you- that results in poems. And clever people, of course, get along just fine with sentences and paragraphs. Poetry, in my mind, is linked with its inherent trying-too-hard badness.

39

I’m with you. A lot of authors I read like to stick poems at the start of each chapter. I think I probably should read them as they might contribute to the chapter, but “oh well!” <skip>

And of course, Dr. Seuss rocks!

40

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.