How can I learn to read poetry? It seems like an impossible task,

Start with Romantics like Wordsworth and Keats. Any selection will do, but Oxford generally have good selections. Realise the importance of sound in poetry, the beauty of the words.

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>>7680588
http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry

and
>>7680597
>Start with Romantics like Wordsworth and Keats
don't do this

>>7680588
start with whoever pleases your ear. try Yeats.

I always think the best way to get into anything is to experience, at least superficially, many aspects of that medium from every era, to just develop a taste for it. Continue from there. Especially easy to do this with poetry considering their general length. From that point you learn more about what influenced the poet you like and gradually develop an interest or respect for pieces you didn't have before.
Don't feel like you have to start at Homer then read everything chronologically.

you can't teach yourself to do it, you MUST read criticism. but, for a start, you're going to have to learn how to read again, most people look at a poem and have no idea how it should sound, pausing at the end of every line and stressing at random. there are plenty of resources out there to practice reading (poetryoutloud.com or something like that), but you have to to be able to hear the poem (don't have to do it out loud but it helps a lot) before you can really understand it. things like structure and meter and rhythm are just as important as the diction, don't pay too much attention to the words. oh and if you aren't 100% sure of what a word means LOOK IT UP (OED only), a poet never approximates, each word is chosen for a reason and you have to know what it means to figure that out.

>>7681482
>you MUST read criticism

Where do I go for criticism?

>>7681968
The autism and sterilization lab.

>>7680588

I started with Harold Bloom's Anthology called The Best Poems of the English Language. I also had a professor who recommended a book called Sound and Form in Modern Poetry by Pinsky. Both books have further reading suggestions in the introductions, so once I finish the Pinsky book I move on to something he recommended and so on and so on all while making my way through Bloom's anthology.

Poetry is fucking difficult to fully grasp, just try to get as much as you can.

http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry
http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry
http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry

>>7681207
After Bloom's Anthology, is there anyone/thing I should read before Blake? His art interests me as does his poetry.

Get out of your house.

Flowers are little sticks coming from plants with colorful leaves in radial symmetry, the moon is that led display at night and it turns on and off at a 28 days cycle, they are considered beautiful. Death is like a game over, but it's forever. Love is a more complicated thing, you are too late to understand it.

Not OP, but can anyone recommend me an authoritative text on the literal, actual techniques in poetry? Pentameter and the reason behind
Abrupt line changes mid sentence, I wasn't
ever taught what purpose it serves outside of fulfilling rhyme scheme or meter or such. The nitty gritty behind poems and perhaps a history too.

I'm a fucking philistine when it comes to poetry and it really irks me. I took the achievement SAT tests a long while back and tripped up on some questions regarding poetry, so here I am. I just want to understand enough to be able to dissect most every technique I come across in 19th/early 20th century poetry and to no longer balk when I don't understand the reason behind something as fundamental as the structure behind the poem outside of stanzas and couplets and all the other basic bullshit one learns as a child.

Is there much point in reading Horace translated? I'm well aware it will be at-best a representation of his works, but would a good translation be worth reading?

>>7682057

see >>7681998

>>7682065
Wow, inexcusable to have not already read that, but I wouldn't have noticed it either had you not pointed it out. Thank ya kindly

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>>7682022
Not particularly, although if you're not familiar with Christian theology you should be, obviously. Blake was a Jesus freak, and both his visual art which I personally think is dreadful, i don't know why he thought "flesh and pale vomit and co" was a good color scheme for every single piece and poetry both show it.

>>7682071
What's inexcusable is asking a question that's answered directly, multiple times on the wiki. >>7681207

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>>7682063
well it's either a translation, learning latin, or reading nothing at all. which do you think is the better choice, considering your options?

is english language poetry worth reading

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>>7682902
no

>>7681482
>pausing at the end of every line
But there should be a mild pause at end of each line, no?

>>7682981
no

>>7682981
yes. he's a retard.

>>7683061
>>7683079
>yes
>no
Thank you, this clears everything up.

>>7683331
the very fact that there's a line forces you to pause there and then move your eyes to the next. the very fact that rhymes are done at the end of lines slows you down as well as you feel the impact of the rhyme.
that other guy is retarded and probably reads poetry like prose. the line is the unit of poetry.

>>7683079
>>7683366
this guy has never read a book in his life

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What is your inclination?

Opie, everyone here is memeing you. Start with either TS Elior or Hart Crane and go from there.