![]() The title may give you some image or association to start with. In fact, you can learn quite a few things just by looking at it. The techniques of word and line arrangement, sound and rhythm, add to-and in some cases, multiply-the meaning of words to go beyond the literal, giving you an impression of an idea or feeling, an experience that you can’t quite put into words but that you know is real.īefore you get very far with a poem, you have to read it. Sometimes the job of the poem is to come closer to saying what cannot be said in other forms of writing, to suggest an experience, idea, or feeling that you can know but not entirely express in any direct or literal way. Though their forms may not always be direct or narrative, keep in mind that a real person formed the moment of the poem, and it’s wise to seek an understanding of that moment. 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. Successful poems welcome you in, revealing ideas that may not have been foremost in the writer’s mind in the moment of composition. ![]() Literature is, and has always been, the sharing of experience, the pooling of human understanding about living, loving, and dying. Reading poetry is a challenge, but like so many other things, it takes practice, and your skills and insight improve as you progress. If a poem is “play” in the sense of a game or a sport, then you enjoy that it makes you work a little, that it makes you sweat a bit. ![]() This act of completion begins when you enter the imaginative play of a poem, bringing to it your experience and point of view. He also suggests that a poet depends on the effort of a reader somehow, a reader must “complete” what the poet has begun. Williams admits in these lines that poetry is often difficult. William Carlos Williams wrote a verse addressed to his wife in the poem “January Morning”: The third is assuming that the poem can mean anything readers want it to mean. 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. 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. ![]() Most readers make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem. This approach is one of many ways into a poem. 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. Since the form of a poem is part of its meaning (for example, features such as repetition and rhyme may amplify or extend the meaning of a word or idea, adding emphasis, texture, or dimension), questions about form and technique, about the observable features of a poem, provide an effective point of entry for interpretation. The goal of careful reading is often to take up a question of meaning, an interpretive question that has more than one answer. Effective technique directs your curiosity into asking questions, drawing you into a conversation with the poem. Curiosity is a useful attitude, especially when it’s free of preconceived ideas about what poetry is or should be. Reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique. ![]()
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