If that even makes sense. Perhaps I’m wishing for a book that doesn’t or cannot exist. I want to read something that is relaxing while stimulating and satisfying curiosity. I dont want something juvenile. It’s ok if it’s deep and thought provoking, but doesn’t have to be. It should not have conflict.
When I imagine such a book, I think of beautiful descriptions of a forest and the things that live there. The weather. The scenery.
I just had the thought that what Im describing is poetry, but poetry is something which I’ve struggled to enjoy.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
Poetry is exactly my thought, so out of curiosity, is there something in particular about it that is unappealing? I teach lit, and poetry gives a lot of people panic, but if you don’t have to analyze it for a paper or something, it’s really a lot of fun. Because Robert Frost writing about New England and something like falling asleep after apple picking can be sublime.
I’ve enjoyed some poetry, especially during several college courses I took where I had to read it. My problem, and this is going to sound really stupid, is that there’s something about rhyming and broken line formatting of a lot of poetry that puts me on edge.
It’s like a subtle feeling of nails going across a chalkboard to read line after line of rhyming verse. Lines stopping suddenly followed by hanging indents feels like being in stop and go traffic. It’s something I try and get past every few years but without success. It feels like work and not reading for pleasure. My thought was it probably has something to do with ADHD.
Maybe I should give Leaves of Grass another go.
My suggestion — and you probably won’t like it — is to read it out loud. The secret to poetry: you actually just blast through those line breaks, indents, etc. and don’t stop until there’s punctuation and then treat it appropriately. It’ll feel super cringey and uncomfortable, but this will make the actual eye motion and reading part a lot easier with a little practice! Sure it looks structured and weird on the page, but it’s generally not meant to be read that way. It should sound more like natural language, and honestly, once I learned to ignore everything but punctuation for a first read through, it clicked so much faster.
Last time I tried to get into poetry I bought a copy of The Best Poems of the English Language compiled by Harold Bloom. I’ll try reading aloud from it to my partner. If she complains, I’ll tell her a lit teacher gave me an assignment.