Reading poetry is very difficult for me. I often think the words

For example, reading a poem out loud is always upsetting because I am never sure if this is the way the poem was meant to sound. Does it matter more, should I just find a way I find beautiful to recite the poem than worry if it adheres to metre (you can only stray so far I imagine, if the poem is written well) or follow the mechanics of enjambents and linebreaks?

>>9701321
Don't worry about it, in the modern education system full of philistine masses, meter is overemphasized. Yes, the poet composed according to meter. Yes, analyzing meter can reveal something about the poem. But no poet wanted YOU to READ their WORKS like THIS. Just read it naturally.

>>9701346
Okay. This is sort of what I suspected to a degree. I still feel like I could learn something about metre to help me, but I don't need to be so frustrated.

>>9701346
>Just read it naturally.
This is pretty much the best advice. "Trying" to read in a metre doesn't even really make sense. If reading a poem naturally doesn't have it fit into its "expected" metre, then, barring something like an accent that makes you pronounce something in the poem with different stress, the poem isn't actually really following the metre.

I do definitely recommend trying to read out loud though. If you read out loud multiple times, you should eventually get to a result that sounds "right" (at least to you, different people will often scan the same poem differently, and there's nothing wrong with this) and that's all you should really be striving for. The more you read out loud the better you'll get at it. It's a skill like anything else that will improve with time and effort.

>>9701392
Thanks friend. This addresses my every concern.

>>9701321
I strongly recommend that you read Camille Paglia's book on poetry (I forget the name; google it), where she gets into all the issues you mention (although very little technical analysis of meter), and offers a brief, excellent analysis of some 20 notable poems, from Shakespeare to the present.

You will learn a lot, she really knows her stuff. It's a very readable and enjoyable book, aimed at the general reader.

Unless all you care about is the meter issue, in which case you should read something else.

But if you're trying to into poetry, aim at comprehending the meaning first; the meter is merely the skin around the substance, which is the meaning. Like an apple.