How do I appreciate poetry?

>>8332347

I don't really enjoy fictional literature in general and therefore I think I understand pretty well your complaint. I'd recommend some Philip Larkin if you want to get a start. The problem is perhaps that you're paying too much attention to what the author is saying and not really allowing it to wash over you, which is really the pleasure. Maybe you should read a poem, and then keep going back to it after a couple of days after thinking about it a little.

Honestly, there are very few poems that I enjoy as well. I think writing a compelling poem is incredibly difficult.

There is a vast amount of poetry so you don't have to read "sappy shit".
The rhythm and sound of the poetry is as important as what it says.
If you learn and understand meter you will have a greater appreciation of poetry (even free verse).
Re-read a poem many times, you will not get full enjoyment from one reading.
Find an anthology of many poets to find the styles and poets you like best.

>>8332347
Read Shakespeare. He was the first poet I really liked. I just thought his lyricism was so dank.

If that doesn't work try listening to songs for the lyrics. A good narrative song writer like Townes Van Zandt or a wordplayer like MF DOOM can go a long way in showing you the beauty of words and I think hearing it aloud helps before you appreciate written poetry.

Consider the breaking of waves on a shore. The measure
governing this movement is the product of a number of
forces, some constant or relatively constant, others which vary somewhat, still others extremely variable or even, so
far as concerns their periodicity, accidental: the tides, the
length of travel of the waves, the angle and underwater
topography of the shore, and the winds, both the great winds
from far away and the local land and sea breezes.

The idea one gets from these waves, whether the sea is
rough or calm, is the idea of a great consistency coupled with
a great freakishness, absolute law consisting with absolute
rage. The tide, drawn mainly by the mass of the moon, is
slow and stable, a vast breathing-in-sleep, and yet, however,
eccentrically offset to the revolution of the earth by somewhat
more than an hour a day, in a long rhythmic cycle bringing
the ebb and the flood by times to every instant. The force
which generates the wave begins, perhaps, far away in
mid-ocean, but it is not THAT [italics] water which ultimately strikes
the shore; if you look at wave motion out at sea, where it is
not affected by the bottom, you notice that most of the water
going to the crest, if it is not torn off in spray up there,
slides back the way it came. It is the power, not the material,
which is transmitted. The wave begins to form, as a substantial
body with its own history and fate, when its base meets with
the slope of the shore; the resultant of the two opposed forces
produces the high and rolling form. Either the wave rises
until the unstable top curls forward and smashes down, or
it rises steadily until the breaker is extruded at mid-height of
the wave by pressure from above and below at once; this
latter sort, because it throws its force forward rather than
down, is less spectacular than the other, but it reaches further
up the shore. The sum of these conflicting, cooperating powers,
with the prevailing wind, generates individual forms and
moments of great charm too complex to be analysed except
in a general way, and as unpredictable in there particularity as
the rainbow which sometimes glimmers in the spray blown
from the falling crest.

The measure of poetry, too, begins far from the particular
conformation of the poem, far out in the sea of tradition and
the mind, even in the physiological deeps, where some empty,
echoing, abstract interval begins to beat; it is the angle of
incidence of this measure upon the materials of the poem
which produces in the first place what in the result will be
called "form." This tidal, surging element has to do with the
general shape of the poem, and is a prior musical imposition
upon its thought -- musical, in that it exists at its beginning
independently of any identifiable content: it is the power, not
the material, which is transmitted. The poem is a quantity
of force expended, like any human action and is therefore not
altogether formless even to begin with, but limited in its
[cont]

>>8333269
[cont]
cadence by the energies present at its generation.

The rise of the shore shapes the wave. The objects which
are to appear in the poem, as they begin to rise beneath
the empty periodicity of the pure rhythm, introduce into that
rhythm a new character, somewhat obstinate, angular, critical.
But in another sense, which technically may be the more
useful of the two, the analogy represents the elements of
speech itself. The tidal impulse from far away, the wind's
generation of force without content, these are the vowels; the
consonants are rock and reed and sand, and the steep or
shallow slope which gives the wave its form while absorbing
the shock of its force, from strength bringing forth sweetness.

The laws of this measure are simple and large, so that in the
scope of their generality room may remain for moments of
freedom, moments of chaos; the complex conjunction itself
raising up iridescences and fantastic shapes, relation which
it may be that number alone could enrage into being.

- The Measure of Poetry, Howard Nemerov

i messed up line 3/4 in the previous post, sorry about that. the break is between "others/which vary

maybe this will get you interested, OP hehehehe

pls read more nemerov, like poetics, or because you asked about the line between poetry and prose

>>8333327
actually fuck it, this short enough

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

No man has ever been poorer for not appreciating poetry, anon, which sadly cannot be said of those who spent their lives appreciating poetry. Consider yourself fortunate the course of your life has thus far steered you well clear of this particular iceberg.

>>8332347
I didn't really appreciate poetry and complex metaphors in general until I made memories and experienced things-- poetry for me has always been about feeling those things again

>>8333396
What makes you say that?

>>8333363
Wow that poem is actually pretty good.