In facebook, I started talking to other people who is big into poetry. They recommend me a bunch of other poets to read like Robert Frost, Charles Bukowski, E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Alfred Tennyson, Edgar A. Poe, etc. I have already started reading a lot of their stuff. I already have a few poetry books but not by a single author. I have one full book of Alfred Tennyson poems which I already read, and have two other poetry compilation books.
When I told other poets, that I’m just getting into poetry, I told them I wanted to get into it so I can start writing poems of my own. I read other poets so I can see how they do it; however, other poets gave me the advice that I shouldn’t learn how to write poems by reading others. They told me you can write poems however you want to and start now. There are no rules in writing poems. You can write them however you want and how long as you want to. Every poet out there have their own style.
I can start writing poems today if I want to and probably will. I’ve already read enough poetry; that should give me an idea of how they do it so that’s good enough. You don’t need to learn how to write poetry by reading how to books or learning from other poets. You can start right away.
Poetry is pretty inspiring to me. Poetry is becoming addicting to read. I want to start writing poetry not only to help improve my lyric writing but I want to write poetry as a new way to speak my mind. That’s a huge part of why poets write poems ’cause it’s their way of speaking their mind in a different way. Back in the 1800’s there was no such thing as computers so they couldn’t use blogs to speak their mind with so they use it with poetry instead.
I wish I got into poetry a long time ago. When I was a kid in high school, I was heavily into fiction writing but I gave it up and switched to songwriting. Songwriting is very much like poetry ’cause that’s where lyrics obviously originated from. So if you write lyrics for your songs, you already have been writing poetry.
Kev
K'Brocking 
Kev,
You are a big Stephen King fan. Old King himself says reading is important to becoming a better writer. And he doesn’t just mean other horror authors either; you have to read from ALL genres to get a more well-rounded feel for the written word. The same holds true for poetry. People don’t recommend you read other poets to come up with your own style; it’s so you can see what others have done, what is possible with the art form. Reading other poets doesn’t mean you can’t start out with your own style.
Having said that, I definitely recommend you get into Kerouac (his novels as well as his poems). I’d also suggest Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” (Along with Kerouac and another author, William S. Burroughs, you have the top three writers from the Beat Generation.) Some other poets I can think of off-hand by name are Theodore Roethke, Carl Sandburg, John Berryman and Sylvia Plath. To see what kind of wild, really off-beat things can be done with poetry, I suggest checking out writers from the categories known as Surrealism and Dadaism.
Good luck writing and reading! I look forward to seeing what you produce, as your lyrics have always been interesting to me.
You are a big Stephen King fan. Old King himself says reading is important to becoming a better writer.
I agree. King has been saying that to people for years, and I actually took his advice. I’m serious about becoming a possible poet, I’ll start writing my own poems very soon. I’ve just been doing a lot of reading first so I can get inspired and get an idea of how they do it.
Good luck writing and reading! I look forward to seeing what you produce, as your lyrics have always been interesting to me.
Thanks. I try to keep my lyrics interesting and real as possible. I’m trying to get away from the storytelling thing and want to make my songs more poetic. That’s the whole point of me getting into poetry. Want to make my lyrics a little different.
Kev