OK. You want more specific instructions? First, go to a used-book store and buy a cheap copy of a book with some title like "Best-Loved Poems". Then borrow a baby, if you don't have one handy. Read the poems out loud to the baby, while rocking or bouncing her on your lap. (If you're not comfortable reading poetry out loud even to so small an audience, start with Dr. Seuss first.) That will give both a you a good grounding in rhythm and meter and in the sorts of poems people read just because they loved them and not because they thought they were "great art".
Next, get a copy of an big general anthology, like the Oxford Book of English Verse or the Norton Anthology of Poetry (a library copy will do). Don't read the whole thing, just dip around here and there looking for poems that seem appealing. Use it for bedtime reading or keep it next to the toilet (maybe not a library book!) Read some of the notes in the book too - note how many of the poems that we do think of as great art are basically just about the poet trying to get laid.
Take a look, too, at some of the more recent stuff toward the end of the book. See how poets like Dylan Thomas, e.e. cummings, or Allan Ginsberg started experimenting. See what they did with rhyme and rhythm and when they discarded it. See how the Harlem poets like Langston Hughes or Gwendolyn Brooks used poetry to write about their own reality. Maybe get hold of a more recent anthology, like Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, or listen to Keillor's radio spots (if he's still doing them and if they're on an NPR station near you).
Now start reading some new poetry. Read online journals, most of which are free. everydaypoets.com will email you a poem in your inbox every day - see what works for you and what doesn't. Hang out in the crit forum here - read the critiques and see what you agree with and what you don't. Add your own crit whenever you have something to say. Write your own stuff whenever you feel moved to do it, and post it in Crit or the Chapbook, to let us have a look.
