Maybe it's the repetition during memorization that allowed me to understand what the poets were doing with meter and enjambment.
I'm mostly interested in iambic pentameter and heptameter: Shakespeare, Spenser, Arthur Golding, George Chapman, Milton, Tennyson, etc. I can't say that I understand a lot of modern, unstructured poetry yet.
The use of language is usually more interesting than the meanings of the poems for me (with the exception of a few, like Wilfred Owen). Memorizing a lot of poems creates mental structures of rhythms and sounds that are kind of like templates that your thoughts can fill, and they echo in my head for a long time afterwards.
I have to sometimes force myself not to pick up a poetry book, because it's so interesting that it can distract me from other things. Before that, poetry didn't interest me or make much sense.
I'm mostly interested in iambic pentameter and heptameter: Shakespeare, Spenser, Arthur Golding, George Chapman, Milton, Tennyson, etc. I can't say that I understand a lot of modern, unstructured poetry yet.
The use of language is usually more interesting than the meanings of the poems for me (with the exception of a few, like Wilfred Owen). Memorizing a lot of poems creates mental structures of rhythms and sounds that are kind of like templates that your thoughts can fill, and they echo in my head for a long time afterwards.
I have to sometimes force myself not to pick up a poetry book, because it's so interesting that it can distract me from other things. Before that, poetry didn't interest me or make much sense.