If you've been reading poetry the way you read other genres in hopes of immediately understanding something interesting or new, you might have missed the vast difference in reading (and maybe writing) poems.
Taken from my paperback A Poet's Guide to Writing Poetry, these three ways to read a poem might help:
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As you read the works of other poets, expect to read each poem at least three times.
This varies, person by person, but you might read aloud the first time to hear the musicality of a poem.
Then you might read again, noticing the imagery or anything else that makes the poem outstanding.
By a third reading, you might begin to enter the experience of the poem, feeling as if you were there or as if it were written just for you.
P.S. Don't buy A Poet's Guide to Writing Poetry if you already have my former poetry home study course, poet's guide e-book, or earlier paperback! Since the others went out of print, this one is almost the same.
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