How to get into poetry
Some accessible suggestions for those intimidated by the form.
Poetry is intimidating. We’ve been conditioned by poorly managed high school English classes to find it dense, unwelcoming, hard to understand, and even harder to like. And, honestly, some poetry is all of these things.
But not all. The vast majority of verse is actually much more accessible to the average reader than one would think. Poetry is, as Robert Frost put it, “when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” It’s an intensely personal, beautiful, thought-provoking, and downright magical form of writing. If you aren’t reading it, you’re missing out.
I was first introduced to that magic, as I’m sure many people have been, through the best-selling collection Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. I found her work very approachable, the exact opposite of what I thought poetry was. It opened my eyes to an entirely new form of literature, both poetry and its subcategory Instapoetry. Now, I read poetry for the lushes of the language and the emotional compactness that I often find within the work I read. It’s stimulating both intellectually and emotionally.
But I recognize that for the vast majority of people, poetry is not something that is particularly inviting, which is why I’ve compiled a list of a few poetry collections to serve as an introduction to the form!
Love and Misadventure by Lang Leav
Much has been said on the validity of Instapoetry. A lot of people are quick to call it overly simplistic, self-help mantras not deserving of the title of poetry. To these people, I say: Shut up. Stop being elitist. What makes Instapoetry so remarkable as an art form is the fact that it is specifically designed to be approachable to the average, non-poetry consuming reader, which is why I recommend you start your poetry journey by reading Love and Misadventure, the utterly charming first collection by popular Instapoet Lang Leav.
The collection features poems about romance, heartbreak, and the downright adorable moments in relationships. Leav’s poems are typically only a few lines long and written in a very basic metric and rhyme scheme that makes her work extremely pleasing to the ear. It’s a collection that anyone can read, understand, and fall completely in love with.
“Love is a game
of tic-tac-toe,
constantly waiting,
for the next x or o.”“Xs and Os” by Lang Leav
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
This may be a bit of a cheat recommendation because, technically, Citizen is a mixture of prose and poetry, but it gets placed in the poetry section of Barnes and Noble, so I say it qualifies for this list, and it’s precisely because it’s a mixture of these two forms that I recommend it to new poetry readers.
Reading Citizen doesn’t feel like reading a normal poetry collection. It feels like reading snippets form a diary, other times articles in a newspaper, other times a call to action, but hardly ever like traditional poetry. It’s an expertly crafted multi-media kaleidoscope of a book that highlights the everyday racism faced by Black people in America. The language is lush and the content is more relevant today than ever before. It’s a book that I firmly believe everyone should read at least once in their lifetime, no matter their view on poetry.
“To live through the days, sometimes you moan like a deer. Sometimes you sigh. The world says stop that. Another sigh. Another stop that. Moaning elicits laughter, sighing upsets. Perhaps each sigh is drawn into existence to pull in, pull under, who knows; truth be told, you could no more control those sighs than that which brings the sighs about.”
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Blue Horses by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver was one of the bestselling, critically acclaimed modern (as in 21st century modern) American poets. She won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award, and even more awards on top of that. She was writing up until her death last year and produced over twenty books, predominantly of poetry. To date, the only completed work of hers I’ve read is Blue Horses (something that needs to be rectified), but I can safely assure you that it’s amazing.
It’s filled with her trademark nature imagery: wrens, wasps, vultures, and a plethora of other animals make their nests within the lines of these poems. The book is contemplative, slow-paced, and thoughtful. It takes in nature and the passage of time on the body with a patient gaze. Oliver’s language is colloquial and at times extremely witty, but always crystal clear. Her poetry is the kind of writing that you can read once and understand fully and enjoy, but if you wanted to, you could dive deeper into all the nuances of the text, which is, in my opinion, the best kind of poetry.
“I’m not the river
that powerful presence.
And I’m not the black oak tree
which is patience personified.
And I’m not redbird
who is a brief life heartily enjoyed.
Nor am I mud nor rock nor sand.
which is holding everything together.
No, I am none of these meaningful things, not yet.”“I’m Not the River” by Mary Oliver
Poetry shouldn’t be intimidating. People should be able to pick it up and find something of themselves reflected in the words on the page; they should be able to relate to it on some level. That’s what poetry is at the end of the day: a universal emotional experience put into words that sing. It’s one of the most vibrant forms of writing there is, and — hopefully — these books will only be the first collections you enjoy!
