Do You Binge On Poems?

[H0LD0Nthere]

How do you read poems? Can you just sit down and read, say, an entire book of poems (20 to 80 or so), in a row? Or do you find one that really catches you, and keep going back to re-read it over a period of days, kind of living with it in your head?

I can binge, especially when the book is a compilation of the world's greatest poems, but at some point fatigue sets in. Usually I read through until I hit one that just hits me, then I keep returning to that one intensely for a while.

On a related note, we all know how hard it is to write consistently good poetry. Even the best poets have some that aren't so accessible. When you have discovered a poet, how many bad poems do you tend to give them before you give up on finding that one by them that will transport you?
Or, have you ever gone back and re-read a "bad" poem, and found that you now "get it" and really like it?

[Bfrisco]

I can definitely read an entire book in a row if I'm in the mood for it. Otherwise, I might stick with some that I know and love. I actually have gone back to a poem I didn't like the first time I read it and found it to be much better than I remember. I bought a few books for class, one of them a collection of poems by Carl Sandburg, which I loved the second time I read through it.

[FNAWrite]

"we all know how hard it is to write consistently good poetry."

No we don't. What we may all know is that it is hard to consistently write good poetry. Big difference there.

Take "Howl" for instance. to me that poem is consistently good poetry. However, I do not find that Ginsberg consistently wrote good poetry.

As to the OP, I suppose for me it is always a "binge" for poetry since most of what I read is prose. I'd certainly read 20 pages of a new poet, but it would have to be some poetry to get me to read 80 pages. I'll also pound a single poem until I think I've got it - or at least got it where I want it.

"how many bad poems do you tend to give them" I think this is a surprisingly pithy question. Generally speaking, not many.

[kdtaylor27]

I find that binging is the only way to read poetry. I binge until my body is worn down, until I need a break haha. Ginsberg had a quote about writing poetry that I feel applies to reading it as well, something about how you have to walk through NYC all day to feel it in your bones, and to write good poetry from those very bones is to write it all day.

[annareads]

I can binge if it's the kind of poetry that's quick and entertaining (say, Bo Burnham's comedic poetry or something of that nature [I actually sat down with that book intending to read one or two before homework and found myself shortly afterwards having read the whole thing...oops]). For more serious poetry, I tend to brood over one or two for a while. I like to find a friend to share it with and discuss so I feel like I can really "get it."

[lovelyreader21]

I binge on poetry, where I can read a book, or even multiple, over and over for about two weeks or so. Then over time I stop reading as much poetry, limiting it to online poets and poems that are very dear to me. I also go through spurts of liking different styles of poetry over others, such as preferring ballads to free-verse one month, yet later enjoying rhyming and free-verse over ballads.

I generally give about five poems that I really dislike a chance before abandoning that specific poet. However, I find that one excellent poem that I connect with can salvage my relationship with that author's poetry. I think that we all understand the hardships of writing poetry (groan) but also that after writing a poem that feels good and right, you kind of go on a poetry high. Or maybe that's just me?

[Genaaa]

I don't read poetry often but I occasionally do. So when I find a good batch of poetry, like a new poetry book, then sometimes I do binge read that specific book.

[Jasmine M Wardiya]

I tend not to binge on reading poetry. Read one or two - five in a day at most. If I binge-read (like prose), I skim and poetry's generally (The Wasteland aside) too short to skim and really take in. Pay more attention to the writing and line by line than I do in even shorter pieces of prose. I do, on the other hand, sometimes binge-write poems. Usually it's for some prompt set or other or because I've fallen behind in NaPo or OctPo. Or because I've suddenly realised I haven't written a poem in a while.

[Alina Cata]

I am very slective when it comes to poems. Don't read them very often. But when I find one I like, it just overwhelms me until I start learning its lyrics.

[DATo]

Poems today, like many other mediums of art, have taken on a highly interpretive and modernistic form which makes it difficult at times - and more often impossible - to understand what the poet is actually trying to say. I may be old fashioned in my approach to poetry but I prefer poems which are clear in meaning and have an understandable theme. I am put off by any form of art which leaves it solely to the viewer or reader to create his own assumptions from what is presented. This can actually work to a certain extent with an open-ended poem like The Road Not Taken by Frost, but when the entire poem is just a gooblygook of words that offer no path to understanding what is going on I feel cheated.

In the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy the author, Douglas Adams, satirizes this complaint with the poem read by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz by having him read poetry to his prisioners, Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, as a form of torture. As he reads his poetry they are seen writhing and screaming in their cages. This is exactly how I feel when I read "modern poetry".

Jeltz's Poem

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee,
That mordiously hath blurted out,
Its earted jurtles,
Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming]
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles,
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts,
And living glupules frart and slipulate,
Like jowling meated liverslime,
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turling dromes,
And hooptiously drangle me,
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don't!

Douglas goes on to explain:

Vogon poetry is, of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning", four of the audience members died of internal hemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived only by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own large intestine - in a desperate attempt to save life itself - leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison.

[Bunny_Redd]

When I read poems, its rarely just one, I will often spend an hour going through them when I do read them

[todwyer01]

Poems are like pieces of colored glass. Some can be thrown together to get a beautiful "Stained glass image" while others look like a Kaleidoscope that has been hit with a hammer. As an avid writer myself, I usually give a poet ten chances before I decide to move on.

[Crayola]

I typically skim through poems, and re-read the ones I'm interested in.

[todwyer01]

I typically skim through poems, and re-read the ones I'm interested in.

What kinds are you interested in specifically?

[LivreAmour217]

I wouldn't say that I "binge" on poetry, but once I start reading a book of poetry, I go all in until the book is finished!