There's quite a lot of people who don't want to, or can't by any means really "get" poetry. I find more and more that it's something where you have to pick and choose and see what works for you.
I'd recommend checking out various styles. Like metal, there are certain styles of poetry that might appeal to you than some of the others. The major styles I can think of off the top of my head are those of the 16th to 18th century poetry, the Romanticism of the early 1800s, early impressionist abstract of the late 1800s, beatnik of the 1960s, and so on. The older it gets, the more (it seems from my perspective) it's more structured and usually based about superficial or ideal romance. The newer you get, the more abstract, more weird and more omniscient poetry generally gets. There's many various strands, and the best advice I can give you is to find a poetry conglomerate database (there's tons on the net, but utilize the academic ones first) and just go through it. There'll be poetry from China dating back to the 400s BC. There'll be poetry from folk artists up to a couple years ago.
The other thing you could do is to go to poetry sessions at local theatres or at poetry festivals. You get an idea of what is bad and good poetry from that. See how people react. If you're really lucky, there'll be someone who will do a presentation piece - a piece that utilizes actors - and it'll give you an idea about how poetry is interpreted by the poet.
The last thing I can think of at the moment would be a poetry class, but all that will inevitably teach you is that poetry is subjective - it's what you take out of it.
Also, I wouldn't rely on the title or necessarily on the sound. Poetry is very fluid, and - as such - titles are secondary. What really matters, especially among free verse and abstract poets, is the words used with the structure. You will notice that
(some) poems
are much like -
this -
or
that other poems become one long sentence that never really ends and just goes on and on and on and may not make any grammatic sense and lacks punctuation of any kind. Format is supposed to manipulate how it's interpreted, what is interpreted, and what there is emphasis on. It's a train of thought, or at least an attempt by the poet to structure how thought is processed in words. It was much more common in the past than now to have people structure works in specific formats... pentameter, a,b,a,b rhymes, and so on. It was also more common for poems to generally focus on the same or similar subject matter (usually a hot virgin red-headed woman, or nature against urbanism, etc). It's just something to keep in mind - if you end up finding poetry which you understand fully and enjoy - in order to perhaps see if it is related to any certain format, style, meaning or similar subject matter.
|