Poetry for the ntry level reader

[JTstories]

I've never been able to properly appreciate a good poem when I see it. Most poems (or quoted passages I see in other books/mediums) just go right over my head and I can't see what it is that makes it good or bad.

I'm hoping someone can suggest a poem or book of poems that I can read that is both accessible but also thought provoking. Some poems are just way over my head and I feel like they can only be appreciated by long-time fans of poetry (an example would be the entire genre of Math Metal versus a radio friendly song like Enter Sandman). I'd like to see a good balanced poem that can show 'how it's done when it's done well' that can also appeal to a regular person and not just a college professor.

[P.H.Delarran]

may sound silly, but you might want to start with something simple and intended for a younger audience, like Robert Louise Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses, or Shel Silverstein.
Learn to appreciate the rythm and simple images first and then maybe move to poetry with more metaphor.
or you could be someone who just doesn't go for poetry.

[Cybernaught]

William Wordsworth seems to be pretty accessible to n00bs, though his poetry is a bit dated. Try Robert Frost maybe, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickenson...

Reading poetry isn't really as difficult as you might think, unless you're reading The Wasteland. Look up these terms if you are unfamiliar:

Simile

Metaphor

Imagery

Allusion

Personification

Meter

Rhyme Scheme

Those are pretty much your basic building blocks for learning how to read poetry.

[JTstories]

Well I don't have a natural affinity for poetry that's for sure. I was hoping it could also be an aquired taste.

One of the biggest hurdles for me to get over is the whole concept of a poem that doesn't rhyme or rythm.

[stormie]

I have to agree about Robert Frost. Good way to start. (Of course, I still haven't branched out much to other poets.)

[Cybernaught]

Well I don't have a natural affinity for poetry that's for sure. I was hoping it could also be an aquired taste.

One of the biggest hurdles for me to get over is the whole concept of a poem that doesn't rhyme or rythm.

You either love poetry or you hate it. I've never met anyone who was in between. I'm a Lit major and surprisingly, most of my classmates hate poetry.

And yeah, you're more old school as oppossed to Modernist or free verse. There are still a great many poets who write in verse. And usually every poem has a rhythm to it, free verse or not. It's just a matter of knowing the dactyls and anapests and such.

[Cybernaught]

Also try Peter Murphy. I think you'll like him.

[BCarruth]

I discovered my awe of poetry in the study of mathematics. I was neck deep in a crunch on a research project, working up enumerative analogies in symbolic logic, trying to flog my tired brain into further productivity with overpriced caffeine. The coffee shop of choice is lined with bookshelves, and there, leaning just off angle enough to catch my attention, a slim collection of Keats. I needed a break, and for me "break" means working just as hard on something else, something I have no investment in. The book flopped open to Hyperion, my notebook to a conveniently blank page, my pencil guided by a mind tired enough to think that assigning symbol to phonic device and plotting their relations, clever.
Two weeks later I was sitting with three other mathematicians, feeding those symbols, their interstitials, and plotting projections into a 28 node cluster to confirm what I guessed at in that coffee shop: that Keats, in the structure and pacing of his verse, was creating consistent pattern relationships that wouldn't be mathematically formalized till centuries after his death. The computer, in its immense wisdom designed explicitly to tell us exactly what "round" means, agreed: there was more going on in that verse than it was prepared to handle. It was a sobering moment, inviting us to revisit the potency of human invention.
Two obsessions sprung from that moment: consciousness philosophy and poetry. I've tried, and mostly stumbled, to recreate that realization for others. You're not alone in difficulty in approaching or appreciating poetry. Trying to explain to a neurophysiologist that their model for synaptic language is blown apart by "roses are red..." presents unique opportunities for frustration.
~nuff of my ramblin'
Try Poe or Yeats. If they don't ring your bell, pour a bourbon, queue up Miles Davis, and read Kerouac's "Bowery Blues". My father, whose last serious dalliance with poetry as a young man was tied to the girl it impressed, has recently become obsessed with Langston Hughes. John Lithgow just released a collection of sharply witty poems. I'll heartily second Cybernaught's mention of Murphy.
I don't think it's an acquired taste as much as a gateway experience. When you find a poem that HITS, that really resonates for you, the whole medium can open up. Trouble is, I can't tell you what that poem is going to be. I've yet to meet someone else inspired to trek that literary terrain by sleep deprivation and a broken calculator.

P.S- If you want a highly accessible example of a "poem done well", read Poe's "The Raven". It's a bedrock standard for perfection in form, often used to illustrate and teach a wide variety of structural and compositional devices. Search Youtube for the vid of Vincent Price reading it aloud for example of how a poem can change shape between the eye of the reader and ear of the listener.

[emptyeyed]

If you're looking for a book, finding an old poetry textbook at a used bookstore might be helpful (and cheap). It would have a variety of poems in a variety of styles, and it would also have information on alteration and metaphors and all that poetry talk.

Also, I suggest searching google for "poetry" or "poem" and then a topic that's really important to you. Some examples might be Iraq, cancer, or daughter. You'll probably like it a lot better if the poem has meaning to you.

[Dichroic]

Yes, Frost is a good place to start. If you want something newer, try Mary Oliver or Wendy Cope. Or for a different feeling, try the Harlem Renaissance poets like Langston Hughes or Gwendolyn Brooks. Some of Robert Browning's stuff is also a good start - try this:

ALL that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.

[KTC]

I've never been able to properly appreciate a good poem when I see it. Most poems (or quoted passages I see in other books/mediums) just go right over my head and I can't see what it is that makes it good or bad.

I'm hoping someone can suggest a poem or book of poems that I can read that is both accessible but also thought provoking. Some poems are just way over my head and I feel like they can only be appreciated by long-time fans of poetry (an example would be the entire genre of Math Metal versus a radio friendly song like Enter Sandman). I'd like to see a good balanced poem that can show 'how it's done when it's done well' that can also appeal to a regular person and not just a college professor.

Only the reader can find a good poem. Spend some time in the poetry section of a bookstore or library and read through a random selection of books. When you find something you like, you're there. It's personal. You can't go by what other people tell you is good. You have to find your own poetry. You'll know it when you see it.