If, on the other hand, you tend to avoid poetry, you might not realize what you are missing. Perhaps your first encounters with poetry were frustrating, a struggle to determine what a poem was saying or might have meant. Whatever your reasons for staying away, we encourage you to discover - or rediscover - the promise, profundity, and powers of poetry.
Why? There are many good reasons to read poetry. There is the sheer enjoyment of seeing words (and hearing them as you read a poem aloud) come together to create intriguing impressions, fascinating descriptions, sounds, rhythms - music! Poetry can be very entertaining as well! Poetry sparks imagination, dares you to see things in new light, and helps to reveal truths about ourselves and our world. One poem can mean many things to different persons: interpretations can make poems come alive, affect and inspire us in unexpected ways.
Some Poetry Concepts Worth Learning...
- Formal Verse - Poems adhering to certain rhythms, rhymes, and rules (such as a Sonnet)
- Free Verse - Poems that tend to follow no particular set of rules or rhymes. Words can be arranged any number of ways. Haiku - These very short meditative poems are usually about nature, run three lines long, and can speak volumes!
- Metaphor - Something or someone equated with something else, as in JULIET IS THE SUN or ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE.
- Simile - When something or someone is likened to something else, as in MY LOVE IS LIKE A RED, RED ROSE.
- Sonnet - A classic form of poetry, usually 14 lines long, with lines that rhyme in a certain pattern (a rhyme scheme). Stanza - Groups of words or lines of text. Two, three, or four line stanzas are couplets, tercets, or quatrains respectively.
Some Accessible (Easy-to-understand) Poets to Consider...
- Maya Angelou
- Basho (haiku)
- Wendell Berry
- Billy Collins
- Emily Dickinson
- Robert Frost
- Nikki Giovanni
- Langston Hughes
- Ted Kooser
- W. S. Merwin
- Sharon Olds
- Mary Oliver
- Kay Ryan
- Gary Snyder
- William Carlos Williams
Some Classic Poets to Consider
- William Blake
- Anne Bradstreet
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Dante
- John Donne
- Homer
- John Keats
- Omar Khayyam
- John Milton
- Ovid
- Christina Rossetti
- Rumi
- William Shakespeare
- Lao Tzu
- Phillis Wheatley
- Walt Whitman
- William Wordsworth
Challenging & Thought-Provoking Poets to Consider...
- Rae Armantrout
- John Ashbery
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- Hart Crane
- T. S. Eliot
- Pablo Neruda
- Louis Zukofsky
For Further Reading...
Some Popular Poetry Anthologies & Periodicals
- Best American Poetry (annual publication)
- The Golden Treasury (classic poems)
- The Norton Anthology of Poetry
- The Paris Review
- Poetry (monthly magazine)
- Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry
A Few Poetry Reading Tips...
- Enjoy the act of reading.
- Try not to rush it: experience every single word when reading a poem.
- Try approaching a poem like a gourmet dish whose ingredients were meant to tasted and savored fully.
- Consider reading a poem aloud to hear the sounds and rhythms of its words.
- Try to notice if the poem rhymes -if it has a RHYME SCHEME (a regular pattern of rhyming).
- Try to pay close attention to phrases used throughout in a poem. Do any of them repeat?
- Are the poem's lines arranged in groups of two or three or more? Are they evenly grouped or irregular?
- Are there any obvious comparisons between two or more things (what we would call similes)?
- Are there metaphors - dissimilar things compared without the words LIKE or AS, as in these two examples from William Shakespeare: THE WORLD IS A STAGE and JULIET IS THE SUN (note the word IS)
- Keep in mind any I in the poem can be a character (a narrator or so-called SPEAKER) and not the poet.
- What is the overall emotional tone of the poem? Joyful, sorrowful, angry, pensive, unsure, inspired?
- What do you think the poem means? How does it make you feel? What do you see?
- Try rereading a poem and see if you notice anything new or feel differently toward it.
- See if you can memorize one or more lines of poetry. It can be challenging but fun to quote later on!
- Explore different poets from different times, places, and cultures to enrich your reading experiences, broaden your perspectives on life, and to increase your understanding and appreciation the world around you.
Some Books to Help You Get More out of Poetry
- The Art of Reading Poetry - Harold Bloom
- How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry - Edward Hirsch
- The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems - Frances Mayes
- The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms - Mark Strand and Eavan Boland The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide - Robert Pinsky
Going Beyond Poetry Reading: Learning to Write Poetry
- The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within - Stephen Fry
- The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets - Ted Kooser A Poetry Handbook - Mary Oliver
- Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse - Mary Oliver
- The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms - Lewis Turco Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words - Susan G. Wooldridge
For More Information...
Ask a librarian to lead you to the Poetry section in your public or academic library.Learning about poets and poetry is a wonderfully endless thing! Embrace the education! Enjoy it all!