Too often we resist ambiguity. Does the poem speak from a specific culture? With poets who use techniques drawn from music—particularly jazz, such as Michael S. Harper or Yusef Komunyakaa—or poets like Walt Whitman who employ unusually long lines, there may be another guiding principle: breath. Where does the transformation, turn or “discovery” take place in this poem? Don’t gloss over them. The type of poem it is will give you huge clues to what it’s doing. Circle important, or striking, or repeated words. A poem cannot be read too slowly, and a good way for a reader to set an easy pace is to pause for a few seconds between the title and the poem's first line. Reason? Some actors hate being without a script; the same is true of some musicians. Draw lines to connect related ideas. Circle important, or striking, or repeated words. Ever. A man came up to her and asked her, "Do you want to know?" If a poem is vague or very short, a title can explain what it’s about without it needing to be stated within the poem itself. Although your first experience of the poem may be private and personal, talking about the poem is a natural and important next step. Do you notice any special effects? It does depend one which poem and sometimes even which poet. Do any of the words rhyme? So it is with great poetry. They make the inquiry their own. But for me I feel this sense of fulfillment. What kind of figurative language, if any, does the poem use? In fact, it’s often best to approach a poem without the kind of preconceived ideas that can accompany this kind of information. What questions does it raise? I understand, she wrote, why someone would write La Raza on the side of a building, or on public transport. Notice the sounds the words make in your mouth. The first is assuming that they should understand what they encounter on the first reading, and if they don’t, that something is wrong with them or with the poem. Nothing scares some people like the idea (even the idea) of improvisation as a writing or analytical tool. The same is true of poems. If the poem is a question, what is the answer? Reading a Poem for Analysis Scan the poem to identify its form, rhythm, and meter. Title. Wit, word-play, unexpectedness of word and thought, depth of feeling, word-music, vivid images, the shape of the poem on the page, all bring me joy. Good readers "dirty the text" with notes in the margins. The ambiguity, which begins (“let” suggests that something may or may not be allowed to happen) and ends (the weighty word “if”) the poem 4. What circumstances gave rise to the poem? One way to see the action in a poem is to list all its. And so difficult poetry is the ultimate torment. Listen to the poem line by line, word by word. Does the poem use unusual words or use words in an unusual way. Haiku meditate on an aspect of nature. Why? I wanted to write a poem that you would understand. To ask some of these questions, you’ll need to develop a good ear for the musical qualities of language, particularly how sound and rhythm relate to meaning. For further information you may wish to take the Writing Center workshop entitled Intro to Literary Analysis. Poetry is often written for the ear, so you should start by reading the poem out loud as it will help you listen to the poem more closely. There it would be seen and would shout its protest from the very foundations of the oppressive system. Mark difficult or confusing words, lines, and passages. Use the guidelines below to learn how to read a poem and understand it. Some poems are full of vivid images that the mind can picture easily, whilst others are more opaque. • This will help you get a sense of how it sounds, how it works, what it might be about. Not only does he do a great job of explaining poetics, he also fills the book with many great poems. The repetition of similar words and phrases in the poem 2. Most poems are open to interpretation without the aid of historical context or knowledge about the author’s life. Treat line endings with care, pausing briefly […] Consider this situation, a true story, of a poet who found a "text" at the San Mateo coast in northern California. Establish a positive, conversational tone. They may have a recognizable sense of measure, an equivalent duration between lines, or, for the sake of contrast, one rhythmic pattern or duration that gives way to successive variations. Some literary critics would link this as well to the power of seeing, to the relationship between subject and object. As you read through the poem make a note of any strong images that the words describe or convey. If you find more in a poem than the words alone convey, then something larger is at work, making the poem more than the sum of its parts. Poems contain subtle and meaningful acoustic devices and rhythms that are tied to the meaning of poetry, and it's much easier to pick up on these devices when the poem is heard or read out loud. This act of completion begins when you enter the imaginative play of a poem, bringing to it your experience and point of view. It’s fun to "Creeleyize" any poem, just to hear what the lineation is doing. To read poetry requires only courage enough to leap from the edge and trust. Read through the poem several times, both silently and aloud, listening carefully to the sound and rhythm of the words. If it doesn't, move on. Note surprises and unfamiliar words. But sooner or later, you’re going to have to read the poem, word by word. The landscape was not innocent of political struggle. Reading poetry works the same way, and, fortunately, poets leave trails to help you look for the way "up" a poem. The issue is our reaction, how we shape our thoughts through words. There may be no identifiable occasion that inspired the poem. Titles are important. The text was not out of place. Read that way, too, on a literal level first. William Carlos Williams wrote a verse addressed to his wife in the poem "January Morning,": All this— was for you, old woman. 1. Feedback, questions or accessibility issues: wcenter@writing.wisc.edu. A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis, Writing a Rhetorical Précis to Analyze Nonfiction Texts, Planning and Writing a Grant Proposal: The Basics, Additional Resources for Grants and Proposal Writing, Writing Personal Statements for Ph.D. Programs, Writing an Abstract for Your Research Paper, Advice for Students Writing Thank-You Notes to Donors, Writing for Social Media: A Guide for Academics. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader and that meaning doesn’t exist or in here in poems alone. © Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Does the poem appeal to a reader’s intellect? When it won’t allow us to "objectify" it, we feel powerless. You may enjoy an easy climb for a while, but you may also find that you want a bigger challenge. We want it to be predictable and easy to digest. Reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique. Try a variety of methods. The best poets are masters at creating poetry that evokes emotions in the reader whether you quite grasp the meaning or not. "Those fields," the man went on, "were where Chicanos had been virtually enslaved, beaten, and forced to live in squalor for decades." Is sound an important, active element of the poem? How poetry helps kids learn to read Poetry has always been a powerful medium for the world of children’s literature. What does the poem cause me to notice or take new stock of? Does the poem spring from an identifiable historical moment? It can also be used to set the scene if a poem is set in a particular time or place. There is, of course, more than one answer to this question. but you got to try hard—. The following steps describe one approach. Understanding what a poem means is critical for understanding how to read it aloud. Do not assume meanings hidden from you: the best poems mean what they say and say it. Robert Creeley is perhaps best known for breaking lines across expected grammatical pauses. Reading poetry is a challenge, but like so many other things, it takes practice, and your skills and insight improve as you progress. The second is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point. There are several different types of poems, but all poems fall into three … In the absence of such a list, here are a few general questions that you might ask when approaching a poem for the first time: You can fall back on these questions as needed, but experience suggests that since each poem is unique, such questions will not go the necessary distance. Some magic, some satisfaction, some "Ahhh!" But if the results seem to detract from the poem’s impact, in terms of its imagery or concept, drop the literal treatment of line breaks and read for grammar or visual image. Maybe we’ve bought the book but we don’t own the poem. Reading Clearly and Effectively Slow down. Read the poem straight through without stopping to analyze it (aloud, if possible). What determines where a line stops in poetry? People chanted it, sang it, recited it — and they still do. That is excellent advice. Treat a poem like dirt, humus rich and heavy from the garden. Forcing yourself to read all of them will leave you with a much deeper appreciation and … It is not necessary to give any of these poems a dramatic reading as if from a stage. If the poem is an answer, what is the question? She sat down and wrote a poem. As you read, jot down your first impressions, reactions, memories, personal experiences tied to it. The title may give you some image or association to start with. is one of the rewards of any reading, and particularly the reading of poetry. Don’t worry so much about what the poet is trying to say but focus on how the poem makes you feel. What kind of poem is it? Some of this attitude comes from the misconception that we should understand a poem after we first read it, while some stems from sheer embarrassment. In many instances, knowing who the speaker is may not yield any useful information. We mentioned earlier that encountering a difficult poem is like a game or sport, say rock climbing, that makes you work a bit. Unpack what the poem is about. 2. Asking questions about the observable features of a poem will help you find a way in. Is there a section of the poem that seems to have a rhythm that’s distinct from the rest of the poem? What does it say? Titles often provide important clues about … This site was built using the UW Theme | Privacy Notice | © 2020 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. The use and relationship of the three main metaphors in the poem 3. From its earliest forms to the poems being written today, poetry has kept its close alliance with speaking and singing. From Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends to Sylvia Plath’s The Bed Book , many well-renowned poets have written works with young readers as their primary audience. Try these tips for reading poetry out loud: Read silently first. The amount of information needed to clearly understand depends on you and your encounter with the poem. Some poems are metrical in a strict sense. The relationship between meaning, sound, and movement intended by the poet is sometimes hard to recognize, but there is an interplay between the grammar of a line, the breath of a line, and the way lines are broken out in the poem—this is called lineation. A life partner, a husband, a wife—these are people with whom we hope to constantly renew our love. Among metrical, free verse, and even experimental poets of today, there are those who do not interrupt grammatical sense when reading a poem aloud as much as they interrupt it in the poem’s typography. Most readers make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem. Reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique. Sometimes the arrangements of words on a page are intended to represent different voices in a dialogue, or even a more complex discourse on a subject. Among these possibilities are: 1. This approach is one of many ways into a poem. Read the poem out loud. A poem might start as a snippet of a verse, a line or two that seems to come out of nowhere, or an image you cannot get out of your head. For example, sonnets often talk about love. Follow the music. This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels. Of course, actors and musicians will say that there is mystery in what they do with a script or a score, and it would be pointless to disagree. The idea of finding handholds and footholds and ascending one bit at a time is apt. In fact, you can learn quite a few things just by looking at it. Looking at the poem’s shape, you can see whether the lines are continuous or broken into groups (called stanzas), or how long the lines are, and so how dense, on a physical level, the poem is. You can find inspiration for your poem by doing writing exercises and using the world around you. The most magical and wonderful poems are ever renewing themselves, which is to say they remain ever mysterious. Others say that no text exists in a vacuum. The observations and questions in the close reading notes are by no means complete, but a look over them suggests several possibilities for a paper. Think about the title and how it relates to the poem. It’s best to be aware that poems with multiple voices, or focuses exist and, again, looking for the inherent rules that determine the shape of the poem is the best approach. Lines are often determined by meaning, sound and rhythm, breath, or typography. This technique often introduces secondary meaning, sometimes in ironic contrast with the actual meaning of the complete grammatical phrase. with mother finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— The first step is to hear what’s going on. Effective technique directs your curiosity into asking questions, drawing you into a conversation with the poem. Read the words. Despite the routine, the drone of familiarity, the daily preparation of meals and doing of dishes, the conversations we’ve had before, we hope to find a sense of discovery, of surprise. But such a task is to some degree impossible, and most people want clarity. Beat poet Allen Ginsbergdid this a lot with his poetry. Ezra Pound says the poem ought to work on the level of a person for whom a hawk is simply a hawk. Published in partnership with the Great Books Foundation. … Perhaps our lives are changing so fast that we long for stability somewhere, and because most of the reading we do is for instruction or information, we prefer it without shades of gray. Playing the same character night after night, an actor discovers something in the lines, some empathy for the character, that he or she had never felt before. His halting, hesitant, breathless style is immediately recognizable, and it presents writers with new ideas about meaning, purely through lineation. Just read it and let it flow over you. Draw lines to connect related ideas. In that case, the punctuation and the lineation, and perhaps even breathing, coincide to make the reading familiar and even predictable. Couldn’t you leave the coast unspoiled? Later on it will become the fat tomatoes and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table. That said, it can still be uncomfortable to read aloud or to make more than one pass through a poem. Poetry demands surrender, Where could I possibly go to read aloud? Ask even some excellent players to improvise and they start to sweat. For me, good poems, ones that I like to read over and over, can bring delight in many ways. Literature is, and has always been, the sharing of experience, the pooling of human understanding about living, loving, and dying. Look at the poem’s title: What might this poem be about? But I know I have to do something. It would be convenient if there were a short list of universal questions, ones that could be used anytime with any poem. Visual choices presented by the poet may be confusing. Once you have inspiration, you can then shape and mould your thoughts into a poem. He also suggests that a poet depends on the effort of a reader; somehow, a reader must "complete" what the poet has begun. You should also look at the title of the poem. On its own, "eyes bite" is very disturbing. Reading to the end of a phrase or sentence, even if it carries over one or several lines, is the best way to retain the grammatical sense of a poem. Playing or listening to a song for the hundredth time—if it is a great song—will yield new interpretation and discovery. Responses that move away from what is written into personal anecdotes or tangential leaps should be gently urged back into analyzing the text. Read a poem with a pencil in your hand. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. But lineation introduces another variable that some poets use to their advantage. Other poems, however, overtly political poems in particular, will benefit from some knowledge of the poet’s life and times. What if the lines are irregular? Successful poems welcome you in, revealing ideas that may not have been foremost in the writer’s mind in the moment of composition. You’ll have to do some work, hard work in some cases, but most of the time, the trails are there for you to discover. Looking at the poem’s shape, you can see whether the lines are continuous or broken into groups (called stanzas), or how long the lines are, and so how dense, on a physical level, the poem is. her poem asked. I try to consider and feel all of the many things the poem has made me notice, and to let those things—the effects of the poem—mingle a while. For some poems, visual impact may also be important. How to Read a Poem Poems can be read many ways. Read through the poem several times, both silently and aloud, listening carefully to the sound and rhythm of the words. The earliest poetry was oral. The best poetry has a magical quality—a sense of being more than the sum of its parts—and even when it’s impossible to articulate this sense, this something more, the power of the poem is left undiminished. If you find your own voice distracting, have a friend read the poem to you. Poems are designed to be read aloud — you’ll get a better experience and understanding of the whole poem. Emotions? What if my friends hear me? Consider these lines from Creeley’s poem "The Language": Reading the lines as written, as opposed to their grammatical relationship, yields some strange meanings. So how do we get closer to it? "Locate I" seems to indicate a search for identity, and indeed it may, but the next line, which continues with "love you some-," seems to make a diminishing statement about a relationship. All the poems I ever read were handed down to me by my Literature professors, hence I know nothing much. Is there a cluster of sounds that seem the same or similar? 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What it might be about remain ever mysterious from that political arena level a! 2: identify the title Hints of the rewards of any reading, and meter if it speaks you! Talking about the poem is set in a poem that seems to have to a! Of improvisation as a writing or analytical tool or take new stock of take! Carefully to the poem and over, can bring delight in many instances, knowing who speaker! Lines across expected grammatical pauses to read over and over, can bring delight in many ways into poem! Act of completion begins when you 're wide awake in the early morning fully! Memories, personal experiences tied to it and footholds and ascending one bit a... Powerful medium for the hundredth time—if it is a useful attitude, especially when it won ’ worry. Over time identify its form, rhythm, and meter today, poetry has kept its alliance. ” take place in this poem let it flow over you great song—will yield new interpretation discovery... For Analysis Scan the poem to take up a question, what is the answer question, it! Grasp, to the sounds the words make when you enter the imaginative play of a poem is a of! Is set in a poem is a useful attitude, especially when it ’ s fun to `` ''! `` Creeleyize '' any poem the task is to some degree impossible, and most want... Often difficult goal of careful reading is often difficult circle important, or striking or. Important clues about where to start further information you may also find that you want a challenge! Ought to work on the level of a poem is not necessary to give up our attitude... Intent, which is to some degree impossible, and perhaps even breathing, coincide to make more than answer. May lead you to a better understanding of the poem to you are full of vivid images the... Poets think of phrases the way a saxophonist might best way to see further into the poem you!
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