I have also "never gotten poetry" while I go through 52 in 52 and sometimes more than that. The part of the problem has been for me, early on the idea I had of poetry was "romantic stuff" and as a kid, meh.
Fast forward to a few years now, reading Louise penny Armand gamache series, poetry turned out to be more than that but I still dont know where to start. I want to "get poetry" like armand and Ruth but I need a starting point.
I've always liked a few poems but I was never able to get into most poetry.
I recently learned that reading it out loud fixes that, particularly with modernist poetry. I'm able to naturally find the rhythm/meter and suddenly it clicks. So yeah, if you've never "gotten" poetry, I'd recommend reading out loud to yourself.
Like music, or anything else, when you find one you like, read more. Find out what the writer(s) you enjoyed liked to read and read that, and so on.
I came to love of poetry through music, but also feverous reading in high school followed by an unfinished classical education. So I started out just doing that first—enjoy something and then follow up on it. It resulted in my spending every spare period in the library going through the stacks and making friends with the librarian who let me access to the officially banned books that they kept stashed for special sign-outs.
The writers I still read the most of are the ones I came to through my own meandering interest. That said, I've been introduced to writers and approaches that I never would have outside of the halls and impositions of university and I appreciate the insight that provided.
So if you're ever invested in the pursuit enough, you'll definitely be exposed to art you never knew existed if you take a poetry course at a local college or university. Some of it will be a drag, and you'll also meet some people with their heads jammed deeply up their asses, but don't let that ruin it for you—those types are everywhere, just a different flavour. If you're lucky you'll find a kindred spirit, either in a writer or in a classmate.
Poetry doesn't win you a lot of friends in North American culture, but I made one when right after I left high school and we still enjoy talking and sharing art to this day.
It's tricky. So for me the first poem that i clicked with was Gray's Eligy Written in a Country Churchyard[1]
Just enjoy the writing and don't go looking for hidden meanings etc.
Now in terms of a different approach, I seriously can't recommend this book enough: The Ode Less Travelled, Fry.[2]
It in effect teaches you in a more classical sense how poetry is constructed and very much increased my ability to enjoy poetry again after a long hiatus.
I would also steer almost completely clear of any modern poetry or academic analysis of it. It's mostly boring rubbish.
Also note longer form poems that tell stories are a good way to enjoy it.
John Milton's masterpiece, Paradise Lost, for example.[3]
I would steer clear of any commentary that modern poetry is boring rubbish.
Look for hidden meanings if you feel like it, what you find is what you find, regardless of what the author intends or how others read it. Or don't.
The Ode Less Travelled is a good entry into appreciating form and meter, but Fry, as you, oddly dismisses non-rhyming poetry with a clever but unsupported metaphor: tennis without a net. No one's perfect, I suppose.
I can think of a great deal of 'modern' poems that I enjoy reading, that I get something out of or are at the very least, not boring (re: Lara Glenum.)
I think of Sarajevo Blues by Semezdin Mehmedinović, and how he writes about the emerging normalcy of the need to dodge sniper fire or get emergency rations from the UN while living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.
CORPSE
We slowed down at the bridge
to watch some dogs tear a
corpse apart by the river
and then we went on
nothing in me has changed
I heard the crunch of snow under tires
like teeth biting into an apple
and felt the wild desire to laugh
at you
because you call this place hell
and you flee from here convinced
that death outside Sarajevo does not exist
- Semezdin Mehmedinović trans. Ammiel Alcalay
To those considering writing poetry, I'd suggest:
Crossing Unmarked Snow: Further Views on the Writer's Vocation by William Stafford.
To those who enjoy picking things apart and the technical 'why' of poetry, there's John Hollander's "Rhyme's Reason." He's not a post-modernist by any means, but much of what he writes applies to contemporary poems.
For the record, Paradise Lost is amazing, and I memorized a good chunk of it. It's boisterously dramatic to recite, and vocalizing its elisions feels like playing grace notes in a piano piece.
It's entirely my opinion, but certainly I consider the example you used to be not at all to my taste; indeed actively bad to read. I completely agree with Fry on that point.
I stand by my assertion that most modern poetry is to be avoided, especially for someone introducing themselves to the form.
I've never actually fully read all of paradise lost, but this discussion certainly shall see me revisit.
I just had a read of the work you recommended. Genuinely terrible I'm afraid.
To get Poetry Write poetry. If philosophy is the wrong words in the right order, poetry is the right words or their blatant absence in the wrong. You probably conjure poems and not realise it, in the highest and lowest moments of your days alike. Learn how to reel them out on paper, then copy them and clip their leaves and tend to them to make them pretty in your eyes. Submit them, get rejected, go back to read other poems to make sure you are better than them and appreciate in awe the beauty of your fellow’s silent thoughts.
Listen to rap. Poetry and music have always been intertwined, and most poetry throughout history is written to be performed, not read on paper. A rap verse is much closer to the genre of Shakespeare and Homer than any free-verse poetry on paper.
I have also "never gotten poetry" while I go through 52 in 52 and sometimes more than that. The part of the problem has been for me, early on the idea I had of poetry was "romantic stuff" and as a kid, meh.
Fast forward to a few years now, reading Louise penny Armand gamache series, poetry turned out to be more than that but I still dont know where to start. I want to "get poetry" like armand and Ruth but I need a starting point.
Any help?