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Jerden's avatar

I do tend to find long narrative poetry like this rather hard to follow - it may just be that it's just not the prose I'm used to reading and if I tried reading it more I'd get used to the rhythm of it, but I often find myself appreciating verses without really seeing how they all fit together.

I do tend to reserve judgement - I guess when I'm presented with poetry I think "what is being said by this" rather than "is this good poetry". I suppose I think of poetry as the literary equivalent of abstract art, its for the audience to interpret rather than for the artist to explain.

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Morgan Hart's avatar

I really think people 'don't like' poetry because they never developed an ear for it, along with negative experiences of being forced to read dense, poorly-explained verse in high school. People don't develop a sense of aesthetic appreciation in conditions like that. And then, after school, they don't bother seeking out any poetry that's not like that, because they assume that's all there is.

Because it isn't all there is. There's plenty of poetry written in a modern, conversational style, that most people will understand on a first read. And some people find it, so I'm not really seeing a death of poetry (rupi kaur is technically a poet (but maybe you mean traditional poetry)). But there is a lack of appreciation for poetry in the culture at large, which I can see, though it does have a few exceptions.

(Also, I disagree with poets thinking they're so special that they have to write in a deliberately obtuse manner. Sometimes, the poetic form is the only way to get at the feelings (the expansive definition of 'feelings') the poet needs to express. And I tend to view poetry as a sort of technology: the many poetic forms and conventions out there have evolved because those were the best ways to aid memorization and dig its way into the emotional brain. Then again, a lot of poets are pretentious, like most artists are, so you could have point.)

(Also, have you read The Poet's Guide to Poetry? Reading it is the main way I developed an ear for reading poetry, because I wasn't really taught before then, and it's also a good resource for writing poetry.)

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