How to understand Poetry?

[Anonymous No.16548158]

So far I've mostly read non-fiction (especially philosophy), so I genuinely know nothing about poetry. Also, everytime I've tried reading it, I did not get it. Now, I've just finished reading a few books about aesthetics, and I've just realized that there are many technical (rhythm, melody, etc) and hermeneutical (the authors I've read, Batteaux and Burke, seem to take the events portrayed in poems, for example, much more seriously than i do, as if the events portrayed in them really happened) aspects that I've completely ignored so far.

How do I get started? What are the technical aspects that I should study? I don't even know their names (metrics? Stylistics?), so even a few keywords would help a lot.
And how do I foster the personal dispositions that will make me immerse the most into these works? Are they innate, or can they be trained? At the moment I don't even know how am I supposed to read a poem.

[Anonymous No.16549546]

Read Paglia's book on poetry, Blow Burn Break

She takes a few dozen poems - Donne, Shelley, Shakespeare, Dickinson, etc, plus some lesser known moderns - and then follows each up with a short essay interpreting it. She has solid insights into the *ideas* in the poems, and *also* how poets use language to achieve their effects and make their various, sometimes very subtle points.

She has a very good feel for poetry, and long experience teaching poetry. This shows in the clarity of the essays. She's very good at explaining subtle nuances in a clear, understandable fashion. Also, she's a "classical" interpreter; she doesn't torture the poetry to make it fit some thesis she's determined to make, or impose bizarre or eccentric interpretations on the language.
It really is a very good and enlightening book.

[Anonymous No.16549551]

>>16548158
Just read Wittgenstein and look at poems.

[Anonymous No.16549563]

>>16548158
I used to cringe when I saw these threads after making them myself... because I still couldn't understand poetry and was ashamed. I still can't entirely but I can a lot better and just need to put in some of the effort of reading more of it now to learn better pattern recognition of iambic pentameter(and yes, I am starting and still on iambic pentameter).

[Anonymous No.16549594]

>>16548158
Read a lot of poetry. Start with the 16th and 17th centuries; if you start later you'll miss all the influences, but if you start earlier you'll filter yourself with the challenging language. Read basic explanations (from a textbook or wikipedia or something) of the most common rhyme schemes and meters (since you're starting with the 16th century every poem will have a fairly strict meter and most of them will rhyme). Also - and this is important - read the poems aloud. You need to hear how the language sounds.

[Anonymous No.16549604]

>>16548158
>At the moment I don't even know how am I supposed to read a poem.
> there are many technical (rhythm, melody, etc) and hermeneutical ... aspects that I've completely ignored so far
And if you wish to perform literary analysis, you should definitely look into these aspects. But poetry (unlike most non-fiction) isn't written to be analysed. It is written to be experienced. Just like a musical piece has rythm, chord progression, composition and even intellectual constructs like leitmotifs, at the end of the day it's still about the experience, not the technical means of conveying the experience.

Read poetry slowly. Allow each word to trigger ingrained associations and emotional connotations that will paint the picture of the given poem. Everything else is fashion.

[Anonymous No.16549796]

Get an anthology of english poetry, and start reading aloud anon.

[Anonymous No.16549955]

"The difficulty often felt in teaching literature arises from the fact that it cannot be done" - Northrop Frye

[Anonymous No.16550985]

learn form before you do anything else