Read to live audience. It sounds you have a confidence problem. Why do you want to write "better poetry"? i like sincere poets, usually they are not the avantgarde.

Stay away from reading great poets, rather study the time you live in.

>>25313509
I don't have any books on writing to recommend, but maybe try reading poets that write very differently from yourself. Or find some constraints, like writing an erasure poem or something that'll force you outside of your own habits.

I agree with >>25313611 about reading to an audience, though for me it's more about being able to honestly appraise my own work through the process. Something about the quasi-finality and sort of trial by fire aspect. If you can find a poetry open mic, you can talk to people after and figure out their thoughts on it, but I think the reading itself is revealing regardless of whether someone in the crowd comments after.

Poetry open mics will also expose you to bad writing, which I think is useful to some extent if you focus on trying to identify what they're doing poorly and what you'd do instead (another game of forcing yourself outside of your usual perspective and habits). You can look for mediocre online mags to read poetry from too.

>>25313509
I love pictures like these so much. They're ART.

>>25314148
>find some constraints
Good idea, go back to basics.
>>25313509
I was going to suggest writing haikus or limericks. It's very easy just look around you and write what you see and what you think about that.

i have read a lot of poetry craft books, some of them are good, others are awful, i used to think that a poetry craft book written by a famous poet would give me the insider knowledge, but they always disappoint and never get to the point.

What i have learned over the years is the use of figurative language, poetic device.
My own definition of poetry being "to be subtle or indirect through the use of figurative language"

Poetry/art should be about the human condition, an observation on the human condition and it should surprise the reader, you can do this through a shift, or in the fancy poetic term, a "volta"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volta_(literature)

the hardest part is to come up with a good observation, a thematic statement, a theme is something like death, or joy, or fear. But a thematic statement is what you really think about the theme. like "death comes for us all", sounds cliche, i could do better.

Look, you got to get obsessed with an emotion, and words. you think you're the first person to write a poem about flowers or love?

>>25313509
This is how I write poetry. You imagine/look at something beautiful (or stunningly ugly if you prefer) and then break it down into abstract pieces. Like building blocks, you then take the abstract and recreate the feelings the subject is causing in you. It's a lot easier than it sounds.

Your pic, for example: her stare, the cigarettes, the ennui, her hair, her long, elegant fingers, etc, etc. Don't worry about being too pretentious. That's the fun with poetry.