Poetry for People Who (Think They) Don’t Like Poetry
‘There’s no wrong doorway’ into the magical world of verse. Enter with us
By
Maria Speidel & Christina Ianzito,
AARP
Published July 02, 2025
Poetry fans often don’t discover the genre’s beauty and relevance until later in life.
If you think poetry is not for you, you’re not alone.
Many people find the language of some older poems — “thee,” “thou” and such — too old-timey, and when they’re first introduced to poetry in school, it can feel like a test. Some teachers present it as something “you have to solve, like a Rubik’s Cube,” says Sarah Kay, a poetry evangelist and author of the new poetry collection A Little Daylight Left.
But Kay and other poetry fans say you might just need to read the right poem to understand the magic of the genre — when you realize, “Oh my God, somebody found language for something I did not even know I needed language for,” as Kay puts it.
Poetry is notoriously hard to define; Merriam-Webster calls it “writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.” It tends to be lyrical and use evocative imagery, allowing the poet to express ideas in a unique way.
There are many poignant poems about growing older, including Mary Oliver’s “Hallelujah” and Maya Angelou’s “On Aging.” David Lehman, 76, editor of the annual Best American Poetry collections, considers the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) as “no doubt the greatest poet on the subject of aging … who got better and better as he got older and older.”
For one:
When You Are Old
By W. B. Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Recommended poetry collections for beginners
The Best American Poetry 2024, edited by Mary Jo Salter and series editor David Lehman
Courtesy Simon and Schuster
This edition of the annual collection (the 2025 edition is coming in September) is full of gems. Hard-pressed to pick favorites, Lehman nevertheless highlights Jane Shore’s “The Hat,” which heartbreakingly chronicles the descent of a favorite aunt from whimsical bohemia to squalor. In “Apophasis at the All-Night Rite Aid,” Catherine Barnett describes late-night retail therapy, browsing the aisles until “the handsome new pharmacist … prescribes the moon, which has often helped before.” An excerpt from Robyn Schiff’s book-length poem, “Information Desk: An Epic,” about working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, tells a funny, subversive tale about finding dead cockroaches planted on a Louis XV desk.
The Best American Poetry: The Best American Poetry book series also has a blog about all things poetic.
Maria Speidel is a writer who lives in Los Angeles with a house full of books.
Christina Ianzito covers scams and fraud, and is the books editor for aarp.org and AARP The Magazine. Also a longtime travel writer and editor, she received a 2020 Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.