How do I become well-read in poetry?

Having at one time been - in my opinion - a semi-competent poet I’ll toss in my two cents but please understand that they are worth precisely that.

I can’t agree more with the admonition to acquire anthologies and make use of them. An anthology gives you a broad range of poetry either inside a genre or an overview of the whole of poetry. From there you can figure out what styles and poets appeal to you. Most likely these will be styles and poets that most closely resemble your own sensibilities.

The one warning I would give you is that if you read a lot of one “school” of poets or one poet in particular then you may find that you unconciously start to ape them - this is useful for learning but not if you get stuck in it.

I’d suggest starting with an anthology that covers the the spectrum of English poetry from Beowulf up to the present. Read lots and see what applies to you and your tastes.

Personally I love the classic poets, the romantics (especially Byron), the 17 century and the 18thy century but for the most part I loathe the Victorians and the poetry of the latter 20th century (except for lyricists). Others will say that my tastes are silly, pedestrian, elitist or any number of other epithets but in the end this is a game of tastes and styles and as such you are the only meaningful arbitor.

Another tip is to listen to music. Song lyrics are poems and as such everytrime that you twig to a line or cringe at a shitty rhyme you are critically judging the poetry. The advantage of using songs as a poetry primer is that there are times that music is convenient but books aren’t. I can’t recomend many songwriters more highly than Leonard Cohen, Bob Schneider and Kris Kristofferson - but again this is a game of styles and tastes.

Good luck and good reading!

Harold Bloom; The Best Poems of the English Language. This is really the answer, I promise.

It’s quite big and covers a lot of ground but it’s not so huge that you can’t actually read through it in a reasonable amount of time. The variety is pretty impressive – it’s not at all stuffy – and you’re certain to get a feel for what you do and don’t like, and that sense combined with what Bloom has to say about things should give you plenty of leads.

In addition to Norton, you might find The Top 500 Poems interesting - it’s an anthology of the 500 English poems that are most often anthologized.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that I can really, really love one poem (or a few poems) by a given author and yet find most or all of his or her other body of work uninteresting. Sometimes it’s several poems, and I do have a few whose work I mostly like…but I hardly find anyone whose every effort moves me or is even bearable. The poem is what counts to me, and not the poet.

Also, brevity rules. Multi-page poems almost always lose me. Perhaps I’m being unfair, but a major part of poetry is condensing language, and long rambling epics unfailingly leave me unconvinced and uninterested.

Second this.

I agree with the above advice, and would also very highly recommend “A Poetry Handbook” by Mary Oliver. I studied a lot of poetry while in college and this book proved essential for me. Another book you might want to read a bit later in your studies is “Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry” by Louise Gluck. Its a little more involved, but also a favorite of mine.