A Guide for Curious Readers
I hear this more than almost anything else when I talk about my work: “I love the idea of poetry, but I never know if I’m getting it right.”
I want to say something directly to everyone who has ever felt that way: you are already getting it right. The feeling that a poem gives you—even if you can’t explain it—is the poem working. Poetry is not a puzzle. It is not a test. It is, at its best, an invitation into a shared moment of attention—and you don’t need a degree or a dictionary to accept that invitation.
But if you want to go deeper, if you want to read poetry the way it was meant to be read—slowly, openly, more than once—here is what I have learned, both as a reader and as the person writing the poems:
Read It Aloud
This is the single most important thing. Poetry is sound before it is meaning. The line breaks, the syllables, the way one word falls into the next—these are not decorations. They are part of what the poem is saying. When you read aloud, you let the poem into your body, not just your mind. And very often the body understands things the mind has to work harder to reach.
Don’t perform it. Don’t try to sound literary. Just read it the way you would read something to a friend who you wanted to understand it.
Read It More Than Once
A poem is not the same the second time. The first time, you are orienting yourself—learning the landscape, meeting the speaker, hearing the music. The second time, you begin to notice what you missed: the word in the third line that changes the meaning of the fifth. The image that returns at the end. The silence in the white space.
In 19 Poems from Vero Beach, I worked very hard to make poems that open further the more you return to them. The poems are about everything the coast teaches: how to let go, how to wait, how to stand still long enough for something to arrive.
“Poetry is how we reach for the divine, to that which is beyond the experience itself—that which gives meaning to it all somehow. In the creation of the poem, we turn the moment into art.”
Let Yourself Not Understand—Yet
There are poems I have loved for years that I still can’t fully explain. And that is not a failure. That is the poem doing something language can’t do in any other form—holding something larger than an explanation.
If a poem gives you a feeling—even a feeling you can’t name—trust that. Stay with it. Ask yourself: where in my own life have I felt something like this? What is the poem pointing toward, even if I can’t say exactly where?
A Few Poems to Start With
If you are new to poetry and looking for a place to begin, here are the kinds of poems I find myself recommending:
Poems about the body of the world— ocean, weather, seasons, the light at a particular hour. These poems give you something visible to stand on while they take you somewhere invisible.
Poems about women’s lives— desire, grief, strength, tenderness. These poems tend to be written with great honesty and are generous to the reader in ways that stay with you.
Short poems— begin with poems that fit on a page. One image, one movement of feeling, one turn. I call them my word paintings. Let yourself read the whole thing in one breath. Then read it again.
Poetry is not a luxury. It is one of the oldest ways human beings have had of saying: I was here. I felt this. Does it sound familiar to you? When you read a poem that stops you—that makes you set the book down for a moment and look out the window—that is the poem answering: yes.
Anna M. Figueroa is a poet, novelist, and South Florida writer. Her newest collection, 19 Poems from Vero Beach, is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Browse all her books at annamfigueroa.com.