Those are interesting questions. I almost always recommend Pinsky's The Sounds of Poetry and Dobyn's Best Words, Best Order for people looking to understand what's going on technically, as described in layman's terms. I'm not sure if that is possible, as one of the basics of poetry is the play on perception and expectation. Thus, no one poet's work will illuminate all other works. I think that The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara might be a good place to begin building an understanding of how a lot of contemporary poetry was formed. I also think though, that being familiar with the basics of appreciating painting (and other visual arts) and music (in a more in-depth sense than putting music on for background noise) also help to understand poetry. Then again, sometimes people immediately "get" particular poems, whether it's due to their own habits of expression or imagination, or where they happen to be in their lives when they read those poems. Poetry's a slippery thing, both on purpose and by design and because of its inherent nature. I'd be interested to get other people's ideas on this subject too.
This is a place where my appreciation is sorely lacking, likely because I've been exposed to far too much crappy free verse. I get Williams' red Wheelbarrow, after a fashion. But when I compare Red Wheelbarrow to Ozymandias or Rime of the Ancient Mariner I don't feel like I'm comparing Jackson Pollack with Rembrandt. I feel like I'm comparing fingerpainting with art. I'd be curious to see a "crash course" in modern poetry just so I could decide whether I'm an unedcuated heathen with no appreciation for the finer things or whether I am an educated heathen with no real taste for modern poetry.
The thing is, there is so much going on in modern poetry right now, you can find anything you want to. You can find complete nonsense which I expect you might dislike. You can find Amit Majmudar's "Save the Candor" which I talked about on my blog, but seem to have misplaced the post. You can find political poetry from war-torn countries. You can find free verse, you can find blank verse, you can find haiku, sonnets, and every other form you know of (and some you don't). I very selfishly link to my blog with most of these because I feel like part of this is the point of my blog: what is going on in poetry, now? I do definitely talk about 'older' poetry as well - it's kind of hard to talk about poetry without doing so - but one of my aims is definitely to point a helpful finger in the direction of "What's going on now in poetry?" or "What's an aspect of poetry I could learn more about?" (I eventually want to write some poets about more esoteric forms like gazhals and pantoums.) I certainly can't give you a crash course in modern poetry... but Coursera can
Yeah, it seems like a lot of people feel this way and with good reason. I mentioned some familiarity with painting as being helpful, as even within movements there is a lot of variation, especially on the surface. To use your example, of Jackson Pollock is considered to be an Abstract Expressionist, as is Mark Rothko, in the same way that Ezra Pound and Archibald MacLeish are considered Modernists and yet very different in subject matter and style. Anyway, you might find simply that you like one writer's work over another, even while liking or disliking the movement they are associated with as a whole. It does bug me a little that poetry is placed on a pedestal, as it has resulted in making it seem unapproachable and unfathomable, instead of another way that humans experience the world.I'd be curious to see a "crash course" in modern poetry just so I could decide whether I'm an unedcuated heathen with no appreciation for the finer things or whether I am an educated heathen with no real taste for modern poetry.