"The most acute rendering of an era's sensibility is its poetry'', Richard Ellmann wrote in his preface to The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Yet poetry is also allegedly "difficult". Therefore, this lecture has a double objective: it surveys the most important authors and works within their literary and cultural context from the beginning of English poetry to the present age and introduces a variety of approaches to apparently "difficult" texts. As it will turn out, poetry, including modern poetry, is far less daunting (and much more enjoyable) than it is reputed to be.