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Notes -
What is the right way to consume poetry?
I would like to achieve a greater understanding of poetry and the canon of great poets; and I have many books of those in my house. But I'm not really clear on how people read poems, I guess. Like, with a novel, I sit down and read for as long as I feel like. Maybe a whole hour in a row or whatever. With poetry, the length is not on the same scale, and you're not typically following a plot or a narrative or anything. Poetry enjoyers, any insight you can provide would be appreciated.
I find poetry grossly overrated, it's been largely superseded through song.
I can count on the fingers of a single hand the poems I find compelling enough to strike a chord in me, often producing outright frission, such as Howl by Ginsberg, Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas, and for more left-field examples:
By a six year old child named Neil who has more talent in his undropped balls than Rupi Kaur has in her whole body.
Or less seriously:
By Zhang Xiachong, a bandit leader from 17th century China.
When Alex Turner puts I Wanna Be Yours by John Cooper Clark to music with his dulcet tones, he blows dry words on paper out of the water.
Poetry is dead because it's largely obsolete, no two ways about it.
I was about to write pretty much the same thing but you wrote it better. So I’ll just add: poetry is the sub-stimuli and music is the super-stimuli; lyrical music is poetry with greater specification of emotion. The decline of poetry coincides with greater availability of music, though interestingly it’s speculated that the ancient poets were accompanied by music. And from the Smiths:
This can be read one hundred ways, but the music and tone specifies it minutely.
I agree, it seems that in most societies, especially pre-literate ones, the line between oral poetry and song is blurry or non-existent.
Framing it as sub and super-stimuli is precisely what I was getting at, and they don't need to be perfect substitutes for that to count.
Anyway, here's an example of a recitation of the Epic of Gilgamesh with period instruments, and while it doesn't claim to be anything but informed speculation, just tell me it isn't so much better than just reading it or reciting it:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QUcTsFe1PVs?si=js1l0zJerTuGmZxL
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