ILB, How Do You Read Poetry?

Belated, confused and lazy poetry reader here - I’ve never been interested or felt like making the effort. But I recently enjoyed Fiona Benson’s Vertigo and Ghost, and Emily Wilson’s recent Odyssey translation, and obviously like everyone else I picked up some WCW after watching Paterson. Last week I bought a secondhand book of Peake’s nonsense poetry but only because the illustrations were so pretty. I remember reading a lot of of H.D. in college. Help!

I think the problem is I’ve come to see reading as a speedy goals-based exercise (read everything before I die!) and it’s hard to slow down, decipher, reread.

Also a sense of shame that I might be a wee bit middlebrow (enjoying Clive James poems etc)

If so, it's ok. mark s says the Beatles are middlebrow.