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Originally Posted by Augusta  I have virtually no experience with poetry. You guys are making me jealous. Where should someone start who needs to aquire some poetry appreciation? The Psalms are the only poetry I have any experience with.  |
Just start reading. Get a few books of popular poets and begin to read them. T.S. Elliot is of course a great place to start. You might want a couple to try a couple or three at a time Frost, Alden Nowlen, Yeats all of these are "accessable". Avoid "harder" works/authors such as Ezra Pound until you feel a bit more comfortable with the whole thing.
Remember to read aloud. Poetry is about the sound of the words. So you should hear them when you read them. This is doubly true of older poety (i.e. Psalms), remember that "silent reading" is a very recent innovation.
Try to read slowly and much less then if you were reading prose. If I am reading poetry I might only read a few pages in an hour. Often reading the same poem more then once.
Enjoy yourself. If you don't like something, try an other author or an other work by the same author. Just start.
I should add this, don't try to "get it". Poetry is not a code and it is not your job to solve the riddle. Sometimes there is a "deep meaning" more often there is only a shadow of an image. Read "the Journey of the Magi" to see what i mean.