to not really get poetry

[Bennifer]

This is related to the Opera thread. I love reading fiction and non-fiction and I love it. I want to love poetry, but I just don't seem to in the same way. I start with good intentions, start reading a poem "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...", and it sounds great, but in my head it fades away.

I think it may be because I don't know how to read poetry. Anyone else not get it?

I don't get it either and I did a literature degree. I took the absolute minimum poetry modules but yawned my way through the ones I did take. It doesn't inspire me in the way that a good piece of prose does.

But like opera, poetry is so broad! You have everything from Chaucer to Shakespeare to war poets to beat poets.

I think you really do need to meditate over a poem a little. If you're used to reading novels etc you are used to reading quickly and not dwelling on individual words, phrases or sounds.

A good poem can convey a whole world of feeling through a few words or rhythm.

I'm revising poetry at the moment for my english lit degree. I am not a lover of it at all. Particularly elegy that I am studying today.

May I direct you to Warming Her Pearls by Carol Ann Duffy (ex poet laureate).

I love this poem so much. (the maid is the speaker, sorry to be patronising if you had worked that out for yourself ).

Nope, don't get it either. It's a personal thing like Art, Opera or Marmite, you either love it or hate it.

I know what you mean, but I think you have to keep looking about until you find a poem that triggers some sort of reaction. Can't really get excited about hosts of daffodils, personally, and find that bizarre sing-song voice everyone who reads poetry adopts a little irritating.... but that daft poem by Jenny Joseph that starts 'When I am an old woman I shall wear purple' produces a wry smile. Final tip... when you find a poem that you actually like, learn it by heart. Something good happens when you do that.

I'm not a poetry fan, but I get it in that it can be very clever and get across the emotion the poets trying to convey by squashing together words that have to fit.

I like Spike Milligan, can't think of any specific ones he did, but I know they're really funny.

Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes are pure genius! I defy anyone to read his version of Jack and Jill and say they don't like poetry!

Poetry is so broad from Spike Millagan to Shakespeare -I don't think you can lump it all together.

I get the funny rhyming poetry

Cross posted Agent zig zag!

Chil: Wandered Lonely as a Cloud/Daffodils is one of the poems I am endeavouring to remember for my exam. Yawn.

I quite like Pam Ayres.

Oh I love a bit of poetry. I got into it by going to see some 'Stand-Up' poetry, great fun!

I like (amongst others) Luke Wright, Martin Newell, Benjamin Zepheniah, TS Eliot, Hilaire Belloc, Seamus Heaney, Ross Sutherland and John Cooper Clarke.

Simple but beautiful:

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I'm growing old, but add-
Jenny kissed me!

zachary I wish I'd looked after my teeth

I sort of get opera, because it is just basically a very stylised form of music. But I struggle to get poetry. I know about the different types of poetry you get and how it is descriptive, but then again I can also see it as a kind of over-stylised nonsense. The only poetry I can truly "get" is the old sagas and things like Beowulf, which had an obvious purpose - they were passed on by oral tradition and had to be in a form which made that possible, hence their use of rythmic peramaters and verse. Somehow trying to whimsically describe things in modern times by using highly stylised, "clever" poetry can seem awfully affected and false.

I love poetry, sometimes it helps if you read it aloud to yourself, but I love the rhythm and music of it, and the incredible use of language -it's almost like a sort of jazz improv. with words -not being restricted by conventional usage, but playing with them and using the sound of the language to enhance the meaning.

apologies if I sound like a pretentious bat - but I do love poetry

A Silly Poem

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

Found one of Spikes I like, short and to the point ('scuse the pun)

I hate wading through stacks of flowery writing.

Just re-read your post valium and the poem is very apt by including spike and shakespeare

Like others have said, poetry is very broad.

I love a good poem myself - I enjoy the economic use of words to paint a picture.

Some poems are all very faffy, but some are incredible.

Zachary - I loved Pam as a kid and have her poem about visiting a parrot at the Cotswold Wildlife Park committed to memory!

I never thought I liked it but went to a few spoken word events and got quite into it. There are so many different styles of poetry though

I like stuff like

I'm not a fan of "flowery" poetry, but I do like Sylvia Plath. Not particularly cheery though!

I loved the poetry we studied at school (Coleridge and Yeats, in particular) and I can still remember most of it by heart. But I never sit down to read poetry on my own.

Belloc is quite fun to read to the dcs.

I think a poem can be either elaborate or simple and each person is either struck by it or not.

It probably goes wrong when you have an 'expert' write poetry and you are supposed to like it because they are so good at it.

My Darling Ducky Wucky
Behind your ears is mucky
But never mind
Love is blind
My darling ducky wucky

Brings me to tears everytime - so moving