I don't really "get" poetry. I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent and well-read, but I've just had a hard time wrapping my head around poetry as a medium.
That said, I do enjoy Robert Frost (cliche, I know). The only poem I can recite in totality is "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe, and part of why I really liked that one is that it tells a short story, and a vivid one at that.
Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'd be interested in a "Understanding Poetry's Awesomeness for Dummies" course, though...
Poetry is like visual art or music, sometimes there is nothing to "get". Of course there are ways to approach analytically, but I don't believe that's where the awesomeness can be found.
To me its about connecting to a particular phrase, image, perspective, or description. Once you feel that connection to a certain poem its a lot easier to feel like you understand it.
The poem I always go back to when people say they don't get poetry is:
"
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
"
- William Carlos Williams
It's simple and effective. A single image, a specific point in time and place, are being described with only a few lines and yet you can almost reach onto the page and touch it. You can try to see it as an extended metaphor, or take it completely at face value. Either way - it's beautiful.
I'm Brazilian, so my poem favorite poem is in portuguese, its called A Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine).
Wikipedia as an assert about it:
The most prominent of these later metaphysical poems is A
Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine). The poem deals with
an anti-Faust referred to in the first person, who receives
the visit of the aforementioned Machine, which stands for all possible knowledge, and the sum of the answers for all the questions which afflict men; in highly dramatic and baroque versification the poem develops only for the anonymous subject to decline the offer of endless knowledge and proceed his gloomy path in the solitary road. It takes the renaissance allegory of the Machine of the World from Portugal's most esteemed poet, Luís de Camões, more precisely, from a canto at the end of his epic masterpiece Os Lusíadas.[0]
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go.
There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison
Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.
Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the Sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.
Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.
Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.
Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the Universe.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woo...
Emily Dickinson!
Here is one
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!