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A Word on Reading Poetry

September 18, 2016

1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Most of you have been taught, probably by your high school English teacher(s), that you cannot understand poetry.  I’m not saying that they stood up there in front of the class and lectured to you on how stupid you are or anything like that.  The process is much more subtle and sinister.

2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 I have a theory that this is all a conspiracy to make English teachers look like the smartest people in the world.   They’ve invented what I like to call the “DHM” (Deep Hidden Meaning) that only brilliant people (i.e., English teachers) can decipher.

3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Well, I’m gonna tell you, at great risk to my professional future, that they’re full of $#!+!.  The only thing “deep” about Deep Hidden Meaning is that it’s something you’ll need to save your watch from.

4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Most things that we refer to as “deep” are really just vague, which doesn’t mean that they’re inherently difficult to understand conceptually, but just that they are evasive in their signification of that conceptualization (sorta like that sentence).   Part of what is valued in good poetry has to do with that vagueness; often it puts demands on the reader to figure it out, but it’s usually not as difficult to figure out as we make it.

5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 The real tragedy of all of this is that most of us enter into the poetry reading process already defeated, convinced from the start that we’ll never understand it, when most of it is pretty darn simple.  The only really hard things in poetry are allusions (i.e., references to other literary works or historical events), and the important ones are usually footnoted.

6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 The real thing that scares us, however, is symbolism.  Don’t worry about symbolism.  I can’t think of a single poem off the top of my head that we will read in this course that is utterly dependent on your knowing a particular symbol to understand it.  That is not to say that symbolism is not important in any of the poems we’ll be reading, quite the contrary, but it is not vital to accessing or enjoying the work.   It merely adds to that access and enjoyment.

7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Also, don’t worry too much about rhyme scheme and meter.  These too are important, but they tend to just get in the way most of the time.  When people start talking about things like that, it reminds me of a saying on those old  Murphy’s Law posters that were popular when I was in college:

8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 A pipe gives a wise man time to think, and a fool something to put in his mouth.

9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 A lot of people hide behind rhyme and meter when they don’t have anything else to say, which is unfortunate.  There are a lot of things you can say about sonnets without ever getting around to talking about the sonnet at hand, and sometimes what you say will have some bearing on the sonnet at hand, but most of it is usually just bluster (i.e., something to put in a fool’s mouth).

10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Just approach poetry like it intends to be approached: Enjoy it, take pleasure from it, and perhaps learn something about yourself and your world in the process.  Just don’t be afraid of it.  Sure, you’re not going to understand everything about it; I’m not either.  Nor is anyone else.  There are reasons that people are still writing books and articles on old literary works that should’ve been figured out centuries ago: they demand investigation and they’re worth it.

11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 Poetry is among the best things we have (and might well be the best thing you can do alone….).  I like to think that good poetry makes you think or feel deeply.   Great poetry makes you do both.  That is all it does.  It should not become a specimen (like too many critics make it) or a weapon (like too many English teachers make it).  It is good because it helps us understand ourselves, and reading it should have more to do with understanding that than understanding it.

12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Perhaps a poem by Nikki Giovanni would be appropriate here:

13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 “Poetry”

14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 poetry is motion graceful
as a fawn
gentle as a teardrop
strong like the eye
finding peace in a crowded room
we poets tend to think
our words are golden
though emotion speaks too
loudly to be defined
by silence

15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 sometimes after midnight or just before
the dawn
we sit typewriter in hand
pulling loneliness around us
forgetting our lovers or children
who are sleeping
ignoring the weary wariness
of our own logic
to compose a poem

16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 no one understands it
it never says “love me” for poets are
beyond love
it never says “accept me” for poems seek not
acceptance but controversy
it only says “i am” and therefore
i concede that you are too
a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained
between the mind
of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is precious

17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say

18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 Okay, now that you’ve seen what you should do if you don’t appreciate poetry, here are a few simple strategies to follow when reading it:

20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 The first strategy, always read sentences, is probably the hardest.  One of the things that makes poetry harder to read than prose is that it’s manipulated to sound a certain way, and when that manipulation is manifested in the form of meter and rhyme, we tend to get caught up in the music and are distracted from reading the words.  Figure out what the sentences say and how they work.  Then go back and enjoy the music.

21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 The second strategy is the easiest to understand, but the hardest to make ourselves do.   Just remember (and this goes for most prose texts as well), the first reading doesn’t count.  And for what it’s worth, with poetry anyway, the second one doesn’t either.  I don’t give as much reading as a lot of instructors do because I expect you to read it, and read it more than once.

22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 The last strategy is the most important.  I firmly believe that everything that is worth writing (or worth reading) has an argument, a main purpose for having been written, a main point to communicate.  You (hopefully) learned in ENG 101 and 102 that an essay must have an argument (or thesis).  The same is true for literary works.   Poems, of course, go about constructing their arguments differently than a five paragraph essay (and it’s a good thing, because if poems were anything like five paragraph essays, I never would have said what I did above), but it’s primarily a difference of form more than content.  You might consider thinking of a poem’s argument as analogous to its meaning (although there’s nothing deep and hidden about it–the only thing between the lines is empty space–perhaps the reason we’re so afraid of poetry is that it’s been mystified to death by a bunch of meaningless clichés).  In any case, if you practice reading poems for their argument, you’ll start to get pretty good at it.  You’ll also get pretty good at reading most everything else.

23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 Now, I’m not going to give you a money-back guarantee that if you try to do these three things you’ll be able to understand every poem you read (I don’t understand a lot of the poems I read, many of which I still enjoy, and I’ll put my poetry reading ability up against just about anyone’s.  Indeed, most of the information provided in this course comes straight out my own readings; very little of it comes from outside sources or from what I’ve been previously taught in literature courses).  However, if you get over the notion that you’re not smart enough to understand poetry, and follow these simple guidelines, and practice, you will start to enjoy poetry.

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Source: https://w.uib.no/2016/09/18/a-word-on-reading-poetry/