How to Read Poetry

[bookboo]

I did my A Level English Lit last year so I know how about the technical aspects of poetry but I did find it hard to actually 'read' poetry if you understand me - metaphors, symbolism etc. I find difficulty in looking beyond the words without help, so if anyone recommend a good book on how to read poetry I'd be very grateful.

[flicrat]

Poetry interpretation is individual. Do you need to look beyond the words? Why not "go with the flow" and enjoy. Immerse yourself in the feel. The understanding may come as you do this, if not does it matter?

[bookboo]

Thanks flicrat. I will try that.

[jno]

some poetry is just plain difficult. It depends on the poet - some, I suspect, actually try to be as difficult as they can. Unless you're doing it for your education, or as a challenge to yourself, you don't actually need to read poetry if you feel the effort outweighs the reward. There are plenty of poets who try to be accessible.

[glasman]

As Jno said, poets generally do not make it easy for us. In fact, Yeats' poem "The lake isle of Innisfree" was a source of merriment among other poets because of its' simplicity. He made up for that simplicity in most of his later work. Try out this poem ( The road not taken ) by Robert Frost - a fine poem to exercise your mind about its meaning.....

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

[Donquixote]

As flicrat said, the interpretation of poetry is an individual experience. Just as no two poets write in the same way, no two readers will have the same 'experience' upon reading a poem. If you're a fan of allegory and intertextual reference, much of the Modernist poetry - especially T.S. Eliot - is overflowing with reference to classical texts and contemporary thought. A poetic form such as the haiku is, by its very nature, mostly free of such reference, focussing instead on thought-image and 'feeling'.
Reading poetry - indeed, reading any literature - is such a personal and subjective act that really, when all's said and done, all that matters is what YOU take away from the text. Find a writer or piece of work that deals with a subject matter that you find interesting and chances are you'll be discovering metaphor and symbolism on every line.

[AB Editor]

Can you give us an example of something you struggled with?

Any excuse to post this:

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[AB Editor]

Oh, The Waste Land is nearly perfect. Modernism is good for you, it's like roughage :)

[flicrat]

TSEliot's 'Journey of the Magi' might be better reading for you, if you want to read his works. You don't say which poet you like/find difficult/want to understand etc, so hard to recommend anything.Try this for size:

St Mary Magdalen, Knighton
I stand in Knighton parish, firm, serene;
from various points my spire hoves into view,
to soar amidst the clouds,
showing to all
the way to Heaven above,
the road to God.

Stand close to my stone walls
and press your hands against my side,
as Thomas did to Christ,
and then, like him, believe;
fel strong foundations,rocks
on which to build a faith,
lasting through seasons, years and centuries,
still bright today and for eternity.

I call to all who live, work, play
within my bonds, to join with those of old
who lie beneath my shadow
in the well kept graves,
to celebrate
nine hundred years of worship in this place.

My open door, embracing summer sun,
radiates warmth
and calls you in rejoicing;
and yet, in winter's deathly chill,
my warmth still calls;
my welcome falters not
through plague, unrest and wars,
and, in my aisles,
sheltered beneath my roof,
shaped like an upturned ark,
I give you strength
to stand, shoulder to shoulder,
trusting in God above,
till all is calm once more.

Peal welcome through my bells;
write "enter" on my door;
light the way in with candles;
fill my great space with music,
chants from happy voices;
celebrate my part in Knighton life
throughout the ages

Go forth into the world revived,
with hope renewed,
to face what lies in store
with thankful hearts.

[RATTER15]

Twas on the bridge at midnight, disturbing my sweet repose, for it was a large mosquito and the bridge was the bridge of my nose!

:0)

[venator]

Read this sonnet by Wilfred Owen, who wrote and died in the first World war- look at the symbolism

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.


September - October, 1917

[venator]

And another poem by W B Yeats - read it and be unmoved?

He wishes for the cloths of heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

[sandyRoe]

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

AE Housman. Good in parts, like the curate's egg.

[DTCwordfan]

simply bookboo, read with your heart and your mind will follow.