A Guide to Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry

When you think of poetry, what comes to mind?

Do you shudder, remembering how you were forced to analyze poems in high school English class? Do your eyes roll back in your head out of boredom? Maybe you wrote angsty poems as a teenager and cringe thinking about them. Possibly, maybe, you’re curious about poetry and what the big deal is.

Regardless of your reaction to poetry, keep on reading. April is National Poetry Month, so I’m using all the tips and tricks I have from being an English major in college to introduce you to poetry and why it’s worth reading.

Why poetry matters

Let’s face it: There are about a million ways to spend your time today. If, out of all those options, you decide to read, why would you read poetry? Why would you spend your time struggling over a few lines that you may not understand anyways?

This is an understandable reaction, but consider that poetry offers an experience that you can’t find with any other form of entertainment. Poetry is uniquely situated in the landscape of words available to read. It challenges the writer to convey their meaning in a concise number of words that have the greatest impact. In his book How to Read a Poem and Fall In Love With Poetry, Edward Hirsch says, “The poem is an act beyond paraphrase because what is being said is always inseparable from the way it is being said.” With a book, an essay, a graphic novel, even a short story—you can summarize it. It won’t be as effective, sure, but you can get across the meaning without needing to read the story itself. You can’t summarize a poem, because the meaning of a poem is found in the very specific words that were chosen and the very specific way they are laid out on the page.

Because the purpose of a poem is so interconnected to its form and handpicked words, we can view the poem not just as a group of lines to be read, but something to be experienced. This experience depends on you as the reader and what you bring to the table. You’ve probably been taught that a poem has one ultimate meaning that you need to unearth, but actually the beautiful thing about poetry is that its meaning all depends on who you are when you pick it up. A poem may mean one thing when you first read it, but come back to it years later and you could you relate to it in an entirely different way.

By reading the words that a poet has so carefully decided on, we are more likely to connect with the experience and emotions they are describing, and therefore more likely to see something in ourselves that relates to the work.

How to read poetry

Now that you’ve decided poetry is worthwhile to read…how do you read it? Poetry tends to be filled with metaphors, imagery, and descriptions of all sorts of things that are meant to convey a different meaning than the one you see on the surface. This is what can make reading poetry so intimidating. What if you don’t “get” the poem? Never fear—even if you’re the most literal person alive, you can still read and enjoy poetry.

Just read it for fun

Because most people’s first experience with poetry is in a class, there tends to be a pressure surrounding poetry. You have to read the poem, and then ascertain some deep, universal meaning out of it. I’m here to say: no, you don’t. Start by just reading poems for fun. To enjoy how the words sound. To admire how the poet perfectly captures a feeling or experience you’ve had. A poem doesn’t have to reveal a truth about humanity to be good, and you don’t have to figure out what the tree actually stands for in order to enjoy reading it.

It’s okay to cheat

If you do think a poem has another layer and you’re interested in figuring out what it is, don’t feel like it’s all on you. Sure, maybe in high school you were expected to come up with it all on your own, but you’re your own person now! So, Google it. There are some great general guidelines to start with, but you can also search for commentary on the specific poem you’re reading, or what “geese” tend to signify in a poem. Especially if you’re reading a more well-known poet, you’re guaranteed to find at least some people debating what the poem means!

Get out your pen

In class, you were probably expected to mark up the actual page of the poem, underlining and highlighting and all sorts of things to show that you’d had Deep Thoughts about the poem. If that still interests you, go for it! But if that makes you go cross-eyed, try just writing a reaction to the poem. Read it through a couple of times, and choose a phrase or image that stands out to you. Then write about your reaction to the poem. You’re not writing an essay; it can be more diary-like. Why does this image stand out to you? How does the poem make you feel? You don’t have to analyze it; just make a record of the fact that you feel a certain way, and it’s beautiful that splatters of ink on page are responsible for it.

Try Lectio Divina

I know, I know, you’re here to figure out how the heck to read poetry, and I’m throwing Latin words at you! But trust me. Lectio Divina literally translates to “divine reading,” and is a technique often used for reading Bible passages. But the steps and principles can easily be applied to other works, and it is a great method for diving a little deeper into a poem. This guide has some good advice for using Lectio Divina with a poem, but there are four basic steps: 1) Read the poem several times. If you can, read it out loud, noticing where the lines end and how that can change the meaning. 2) Reflect on a word, line, or image that stood out to you. What do you like about it? Does it have multiple meanings? 3) Respond to this by writing about why you like this phrase. How does it connect to your life? Are there any lessons you can take away from it? Or is it just a beautiful thing you can carry with you? 4) Review the poem by reading it again, then thinking back on what you’ve written and reflected on. Allow the poem to settle in your thoughts so it stays at the top of your mind throughout the day.

Tips to start reading poetry

Now, it feels unfair to say, “That’s it! Go read a poem” because there are literally thousands (maybe even millions?) of poems and some of them are crazy long and some are meant to be confusing so how are you supposed to choose? Instead of sending you off into the unknown, here are some starting places to dip your toe into poetry.

Poems for beginners

This is completely arbitrary, but I figure the best starting place to give you are some of my favorite poets. These include Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. They’re pretty popular (for poets, at least) so you might have heard their names before, but their poems are great because they’re mostly focused on nature. So at the most basic level, you can appreciate the descriptions of wildlife and foliage and the beautiful language. Then, as you get more comfortable, you can start looking at the other meanings they’re weaving in. At the end of this post, I’ve included a poem by Mary Oliver to get you started!

Try a book in verse

If you still aren’t convinced that poems are for you, try reading a book written in verse. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo and 500 Words or Less by Juleah del Rosario are my two favorites, but there are plenty out there. They’re a perfect blend of the concise, impactful language of poems with the longer story and plot of a novel.

Search for topics that interest you

The website Poets.org is a fantastic resource to find poems. You can sort through poems or poets by occasions, themes, and structure of a poem, or you can just search a word and see what comes up. You wouldn’t choose a book or movie or video game about something that doesn’t interest you, so why would you force yourself to read a poem about something you’re not interested in?

Try the Poem-A-Day newsletter

While you’re at Poets.org, go ahead and sign up for their daily email! It delivers a new poem each day to your inbox. This is a great way to discover new poets, and it offers a mix of modern and older poetry. If you’re overwhelmed by where to start, take the decision out of your hands and just commit to reading the poem that gets sent to you each day.

Get a buddy

Who says book clubs are only for books? I mean, sure, it’s in the name, but reading poetry doesn’t have to be a solo endeavor. Find a friend or two and work on reading poetry together. You could commit to reading through a book of poetry, or just read one. It’s helpful to hear how a poem affected other people, and their insights may spark something new in you. Plus, it provides accountability, so that you don’t give up on poetry after you have trouble with one poem.

Poetry can seem intimidating or obscure, but if you commit to reading it regularly, it will enrich your life and help you look at the world in a new way. And who knows—by April next year, you might be writing poetry of your own!

Do you like to read poetry? Do you have a favorite poem or poet? Let me know in the comments!

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Ready to get started practicing your new skills? Try reading through this poem by Mary Oliver.

The Moths

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink moccasin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
It leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.