# What do you get out of poetry? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 19, 2010, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532 "2010-01-19T04:59:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2010, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/21 "2010-01-19T23:33:06Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Classical music and poetry are both widely thought of by way too many people as high-brow, stuffy, boring, sickly-sweet and flowery, cultural (as opposed to entertaining), and Good For You (as opposed to enjoyable). Furthermore, anything written before the 1900’s is old-fashioned and passe—a dead art form—while anything written since that time is difficult, bizarre (dispensing as it does with rhyme and meter in the case of poetry, or traditional harmony and melody in the case of music), and written to impress other poets/composers/critics/academics (if not just self-indulgent intellectual masturbation), and the general public be damned. You say that like it’s a bad thing. Honestly, all creative endeavors are for the enjoyment of someone but not everyone. Never a need to get all twisty-knickers about that fact. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2010, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/22 "2010-01-19T23:45:35Z")
**Nzinga** said it best, but I do like slam poetry as well. It’s great whenever you’re able to get to that kernal of meaning, especially whenever others might gloss over the best bits because they don’t want to go through that extra bit of trouble. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_Bowe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/23 "2010-01-20T00:03:46Z")
I like to approach poetry from the historical perspective. For the last several hundred years certain people seem to put an artsy-fartsy feel on it. But that wasn’t always the case. Poetry once served a very basic purpose…it improved our memories in an illiterate world. James Burke’s examples included: “Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” There’s your weather report. “Thirty days have September, April June and November.” There’s your calendar. Then movable type was invented, the price of books fell and it became worthwhile to learn to read. And then people started to give poetry it’s artsy feel. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/24 "2010-01-20T01:19:53Z")
I like poetry. I had a grade eleven teacher who introduced me to a pretty good anthology, which had _The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter_ in it. Still one of my favourite love poems, along with Eliot’s _A Dedication to My Wife_ and cummings’ _Somewhere I Have Never Travelled_. I really like Eliot- I’ve memorised a bunch of his poems, including two of the _Four Quartets_ and some of his Ariel poems. I like Dickinson, and Dante, and George Herbert, Wendell Berry, and a whole bunch of other poets. It’s beautiful, layered, and complex. Good poetry marries words and makes succinct, unforgettable images. And it _sounds_ beautiful, read aloud. \*Tell all the truth, but tell it slant Success in circuit lies Too bright for our infirm delight The truth’s superb surprise. As lightning to the children eased With explanation kind The truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind.\* ---
**Author:** ![Theodore\_Striker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@Theodore\_Striker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theodore_Striker)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/25 "2010-01-20T02:05:56Z")
I am not a fan of traditional rhyme and meter verse, but it has its place, and I am not a fan of the shock poetry that most slams seem to go towards. what i get out of the poetry I enjoy is a snippet of truth and insight from another person’s perspective. I could do without the supposed cleverness and triple entendre that many poets try to use, it seems to take the soul out of the verse. Do it without it being forced, and it is a thing of beauty and power. Writing it is cathartic, even when it is bad. ---
**Author:** ![LunarPlexus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@LunarPlexus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LunarPlexus)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/26 "2010-01-20T02:18:20Z")
> [@Lissla\_Lissar](#): > > \*Tell all the truth, but tell it slant > Success in circuit lies > Too bright for our infirm delight > The truth’s superb surprise. > > As lightning to the children eased > With explanation kind > The truth must dazzle gradually > Or every man be blind.\* tm(etered);dr 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/27 "2010-01-20T02:39:17Z")
I’ve always been attracted to words. In some ways I am a word collector who trawls dictionarys and conversations looking for new and shiny words. Poetry is the attempt to turn words into beauty just as music is to art, painting is to color, or sculpting is to form. And I appreciate that beauty just as one can appreciate a nice painting or concerto. Sure, some poetry gets full of itself but what art doesn’t? A lot of my friends and peers complain about it. They think it’s silly to spend so much time trying to decode poems and find the meaning. Well, to me that’s part of the pleasure. Some people enjoy hunting ducks, I enjoy hunting metaphors. It’s a lot warmer and less messy. And I love reading new poems. I don’t pretend to be an expert but I do enjoy the attempt. I’d love to see some more examples of poetry that people like. There’s already been some Emily Dickinson, I see. I’ve always had a fascination with Edna St. Vincent Millay myself. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/28 "2010-01-20T02:49:33Z")
I find some poetry evokes a time and a place as well, if not better than other media. I find some poetry gives me an insight into how others view the world, gives me more respect for points-of-view that run counter to my own. Other poetry still reveals commonalities between seemingly disparate human cultures, experiences. I also find that some poems makes me happy, others makes me very sad. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/29 "2010-01-20T03:56:13Z")
Wow! I had to be away from my computer for much of the day; maybe I should have started this tomorrow… It’s interesting - poetry in the form of lyrics surrounds us constantly. Poetry as the naked spoken word or the shining page, much less so. For all that, most of us have a few words of Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson or Maya Angelou that resonate for us. Somehow, poetry has a harder time riding the fine line between glurge and artifice for many people. There are many who look down on the limerick, but I’m not one of them. I’ve heard about men from Nantucket or women from China far too often, but I’ve also heard about the musical man from La Tuque, the Mountie from Upper Musquodoboit and the pastry chef down on his luck. There’s just something compelling and jolly about them… The parallel to classical music is interesting - I don’t know that classical music itself is disparaged as freely, but when I think of TV sitcoms, the first few lovers of classical music that come to mind are Felix Unger (Tony Randall in The Odd Couple), Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers in M_A_S\*H) and Frasier and Niles Crane (Kelsey Grammar and David Hyde Pierce in Frasier.). That’s a pretty pompous group of people, and I’m struggling to come up with anyone to balance them out… I appreciate form and rhyme when I’m reading it, but I almost never write in them. I’ve been working almost exclusively in modernist poetry for the last year. One of the things that has helped me delve deeper into it is the idea that the line endings are there to show the search for the next word, and that the poet is using those line endings as a way of transcribing the sound of the poem, as the poet hears it in his head, onto the page. It then becomes the actor’s job to find that sound and lift it off the page. Among my favourites - W. B. Yeats, Walt Whitman, Michael Ondaatje, Seamus Heaney, Matthew Tierney, Jeramy Dodds. I love Beaudelaire and Pablo Neruda as well, but I’m always conscious of the distance caused by the other language. And for me, there’s been nothing like trying to write some poetry to heighten my appreciation for what others have done. “Your true lover (of music, in the original, but it works just as well for poetry…) does more than admire the muse, he sweats a little in her service.” - Catherine Drinker Bowen, from “Friends and Fiddlers”. This discussion fascinates me, but I’ve got to get to sleep. More later… ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/30 "2010-01-20T06:01:36Z")
> [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](#): > > I am really puzzled by the obscure hostility many show towards poetry. Most people don’t like poetry at all, but most people don’t like classical music at all either, and I don’t hear people dissing classical music. Most people don’t like Mathematics, but people don’t generally insult Mathematics as though it were some blight upon humanity. > > But lots of people really seem to _hate_ poetry. Are they just trying to show their toughness or something? ie “I’m not the kind of guy that enjoys reading words that are supposed to evoke emotions.” Well, some of us were Traumatized at an early age by an aunt who could make Vogons run from her. I think that part of the reason that I don’t like poetry is because the poet implies that if I don’t like his/her poem, I simply cannot appreciate the Finer Things In Life. Well, yes, I can. I like some opera and some classical music. I even like some poetry. But most poetry, even the stuff that gets published commercially, is just too precious for me to be able to stomach, or it’s terribly, terribly sincere. Sincerity doesn’t mean that a poem or other literary work is good, it just means that it’s sincere. I think that people who don’t like poetry just don’t care for that style. I particularly don’t like most haiku, because most people just jot down anything that fits the rhyming scheme, without regard as to whether the haiku will also obey the traditional way that the words work in haiku. And I don’t think that it’s because I’m afraid to read stuff that evokes emotions. I regard fiction that doesn’t make me feel SOMETHING to be a failure. I want to feel happy, or sad, or scared, or in suspense when I read fiction. I want to feel SOMETHING. My favorite books and stories, the ones I read and re-read, are the ones that evoke the strongest emotions in me. Of course, if it’s a book on math, it’s OK if it doesn’t make me feel something. So your theory doesn’t apply to me. Of course, since I do like some poetry, maybe you weren’t talking about people like me. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/31 "2010-01-20T09:43:16Z")
There’s that famous Wordsworth quotation – poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”; and to me, there’s something to that: poetry is able to transmit the extra-verbal qualities of personal experience, things one would have a hard time to put in prose. You have more ‘channels’ of expression available, additionally to just the words – structure and form, metre, rhyme or lack thereof, tempo, rhetorical period, etc. to transmit the ‘flavour’ of experience rather than just relating it in a descriptive way (true, most prose – good prose, at least – doesn’t content itself with pure description, either, but the principle is far more pronounced in poetry). In short, poetry gives you the ability to communicate the deeply subjective; to use language to truly show rather than merely tell. A good poem, to me, does not merely talk of things, but makes me experience those things. There’s more to it than that – I do appreciate a poem’s formal beauty, or its imagery, an insightful point of view or a new perspective on a familiar one, but I think first and foremost it’s this vicarious, yet vivid experience that I ‘get out of’ poetry. ---
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/32 "2010-01-20T09:56:08Z")
**Malthus** has said much of what I could say, and especially “words that simply sum up the human condition and cannot be forgotten”. Read Frost’s poem “Provide, Provide” for another version of that. [link](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/provide-provide/) Plus, I think the fact that the words are so well chosen that they stay in your mind is as important as the “human condition” that they state. Interesting that **Ministre** mentions music in the OP… ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/33 "2010-01-20T12:06:51Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I think that part of the reason that I don’t like poetry is because the poet implies that if I don’t like his/her poem, I simply cannot appreciate the Finer Things In Life. I think this scares off a lot of people, and unfairly so. Sometimes you dislike poetry (or opera or…) because you don’t understand it, sometimes you dislike it because, even though you do understand it, it’s not to your personal taste, and sometimes you dislike it because it really is pretentious shit. The poet doesn’t get to decide which one of those it is; the reader does. To shift briefly to a different medium: I used to walk through art galleries looking carefully at all the artworks and reading all the little cards next to them. It was tedious and exhausting, like studying for an exam. Now I walk through slowly, scan the art as I go and stop whenever something really catches my eye (and there’s no telling what will attract me to something - could be anything). I find that overall I spend more time contemplating the art that really speaks to me and less time looking at stuff I don’t care about. It makes the whole experience much more fulfilling. Likewise, poems and poets that don’t do anything for me, I ignore. Those that really move or amuse me (Cope, Nash, Rilke, Robinson, to name a few), I read over and over again. You need to sample enough to find what you like, but don’t feel bad if you don’t like something. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/34 "2010-01-20T16:13:52Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > **Rigamarole** , please > Do not shit on poetry threads > Or any others. It’s not my fault that Poetry is less pleasant Than my excrement ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/35 "2010-01-20T16:27:23Z")
I can’t stand poetry, except for two: “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night” and “Dulce Est Decorum Est.” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/36 "2010-01-20T16:32:59Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > It’s not my fault that > Poetry is less pleasant > Than my excrement I wasn’t kidding. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I’m suggesting you take the one that leads out of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/37 "2010-01-20T16:37:38Z")
> [@Woeg](#): > > As a writer of poetry, I’ve always preferred more traditional styles, using rhyme and meter and strict rules of construction - I find the challenge of writing within the restraints to be pleasurable, and it makes my mind work hard to express my feelings. I’ve never been able to really write good free form verse, however. Agreed. As I’ve said before, a lot of people who fancy themselves as poets tend to embrace free form because it’s liberating. They treat it as free license to write all sorts of crap and call it poetry. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/38 "2010-01-20T21:42:18Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > I think this scares off a lot of people, and unfairly so. Sometimes you dislike poetry (or opera or…) because you don’t understand it, sometimes you dislike it because, even though you do understand it, it’s not to your personal taste, and sometimes you dislike it because it really is pretentious shit. The poet doesn’t get to decide which one of those it is; the reader does. > > To shift briefly to a different medium: I used to walk through art galleries looking carefully at all the artworks and reading all the little cards next to them. It was tedious and exhausting, like studying for an exam. Now I walk through slowly, scan the art as I go and stop whenever something really catches my eye (and there’s no telling what will attract me to something - could be anything). I find that overall I spend more time contemplating the art that really speaks to me and less time looking at stuff I don’t care about. It makes the whole experience much more fulfilling. > > Likewise, poems and poets that don’t do anything for me, I ignore. Those that really move or amuse me (Cope, Nash, Rilke, Robinson, to name a few), I read over and over again. You need to sample enough to find what you like, but don’t feel bad if you don’t like something. Absolutely! I’m an enthusiastic anthologist - I’ll read through a collection, taking note of any poems that strike me, then I’ll search out the author’s book and read through that. Many times I’ve come away with only one or two poets that I wanted to follow up on, but something about their work has really struck me. And I think everybody has the right to decide for themselves what is or is not to their tastes. I have to watch myself that my enthusiasm doesn’t carry over into pushiness. There’s a fine line between “I highly recommend…” and “You have to read…”. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/39 "2010-01-20T22:21:30Z")
A poem is an opportunity to play. A lot of people don’t like that. A lot of people like to read things where the meaning is firmly nailed down: The author encoded a meaning in the text and by “correctly” decoding the text as they read they learn what the “proper” meaning is. Fuck that shit! I like works that are open, allowing me to wander around inside them. The point isn’t to arrive at a particular destination/interpretation. The point is to take the trip. Good poems work like that. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2010, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532/40 "2010-01-21T03:50:19Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I wasn’t kidding. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I’m suggesting you take the one that leads out of this thread. Uh, really? From the OP: > [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > Dopers - I want to know about your individual reaction to poetry. There are no wrong answers to this question, and there are at least as many right answers as there are people. So, I guess then detesting poetry is a wrong answer after all? I thought you’d at least be placated when I put my disgust for poetry in the form of a poem. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-get-out-of-poetry/525532.md?page=3)