Poetryanons, I need some advice. I've been getting into poetry after always hating it. I picked up pic related and while it's helped me understand the mechanics I'm still a little confused:1) How is poetry supposed to be read? When I was learning Shakespeare I got used to reading him sentence by sentence and not line by line. I suppose I could do the same with poetry but I feel like that'd be missing the point; I can't imagine sustaining dactylic hexameter or something for a long time. Then again, I imagine poetry is meant to be reread and understood over time. 2) pic related goes into different patterns of rhyme/blank verse, different syllable counts, ABBA etc. My question is what purpose does each of these forms serve? Why are some poems 12 syllables written in iambic pentameter while some are in blank verse? Is it just a matter of different time periods and styles? It kind of reminds me of song structure (verse/chorus/verse/bridge/chorus) but song structure is more streamlinedany other tips would be appreciated.
>>241141541) imho subvocalized. Read aloud can also work but not all poems support that (also the aural aspect seems to subtract something--might just be me though)2) Partly a product of its time. Partly just local minima on the space of what sounds good to the human subvocal "ear". Adherence to form doesn't itself make a good poem, but good poems will adhere to a finite set of forms. Constraints also help with creativity.Other tips: most poetry is really bad. I.e poetry is one of those arts where tastes can be very specific and therefore differ wildly from person to person, so the ratio of poetry you will like vs. dislike can be very, very small. Therefore, you should read widely and prepare yourself to hate most of what you read. Luckily most poems are short so the torture is brief.
>>24114154>I need a book to tell me how to read1) How is poetry supposed to be readFrom left to right.
>>24114294>subvocalizedso when you read poems are you making a mental note of stressed syllables and figuring out if it's iambic or dactylic and whatnot? Do you figure it out while reading? Is knowing all this unnecessary? >you should read widely and prepare yourself to hate most of what you readalready learned that lol. Of the few I've read, I like Kipling, Hughes and Plath.
>>24114318Nope, none of that. I might it do it afterward if I want to replicate the effect on my own poetry, but on a first read it's just about goosebumps. Same as music really. You're not thinking about chords or scales the first time you listen something that hits right, you're just grooving.
>>24114154>>24114318You're overthinking things. Poetry is like music, and you're doing the equivalent of "oh, so the melody goes from a diminished fifth to an augmented fourth, establishing a polyrhythmic atonal falsetto..." Nigga just groove to the music. Read the poem out loud, see how the sounds come together and form a rhythm. The scholars come up with all kinds of fancy terms but remember that fucking Homer was illiterate and recited (if not outright sung) his poems from memory, possibly to the accompaniment of music.Poetry is just pretty sounds + dense metaphors.
