Reading>Bibliography>Poetry Peck&Coyle PractCrit

Practical Criticism: How to Write a Critical Appreciation Peck &

Coyle

Ch 1 Understanding a poem. p 14

intro: summarise + what is the tension + larger theme. SZ:

‘The Welsh Hill Country’ is a poem about the Welsh countryside and
farming in particular. It explores the idea of sheep grazing in a
typically romantic pastoral scene, the buildings one might see in such
a landscape and a man farming the land in the traditional manner in these villages.
When we look more deeply we see a tension arising behind the bucolic and
romantic scene. Behind this, ‘Too far for you to see,’ the narrator indicates a rotting
decay taking place, with parasites and wild nature and disease taking over man’s
ordered life. The sheep are being gnawed, the background is bleak, the houses are
falling down and being consumed by weeds and the farmer is tubercular. Through
this poem we can see a larger theme of life succumbing to death and decay and
that all man’s schemes and ordering of things, come to naught.
p18
Starting and essay. Summarise the poem, establish your sense of the central
opposition in the poem, set up the controlling idea for your essay as a whole.
See P&C’s summary. p20 Three sentences of summary, one sentence about the
tension and one sentence that steps back to make an initial comment on a
larger theme.

THE TENSION IS THE KEY: if you have spotted a tension you

have in your hand the key that will enable you to unlock any
detail in the poem.

Then, a paragraph on each stanza. If the poem is not divided, create divisions.

Para 1: pick out words or phrases worthy of comment. The tension is the key (see
above.) Every detail will be adding to one side or the other of the tension you
have spotted, bringing to life, and extending, the issue you have identified.
You are building on what you have already established and as you do so, you will
develop your understanding of the broader implications of the tension you have
spotted.
At one level, picturesque impression of Welsh countryside, sheep ‘Arranged
romantically’ suggesting an idealised view so often seen in art - suggests on display
for - tourist? poet? - nature as idealised. On the other hand, the poet points to …
the true face of the countryside, challenging the idealised view of nature…
The reality is conveyed ‘in the powerful and emotive disease words’ —

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Welsh place-names - familiarity vs foreign sounding to the reader… underlining the

conflict between the real and the romantic. ‘Here is another world, another
language, a kind of mystery to which we are strangers.’ Will the poem ‘translate’ this
for us?

Para 2: Main impression of the second stanza is of nature reclaiming the land in
some way. What man has built seems a kind of imposition on the land - impression
of nature as destructive (although seems warm and kind at this point).
Nature is associated with fertility, yet here, emphasis is on barren, infertile
bareness. Could see the poem in political terms - this heartland of Wales falling into
decay, neglected, depopulated, that the observer (implicitly English) too far away to
see. But overall, impression is of slow death from within.

Para 3: Look at how poem concludes. Again, the pretty superficial impression
of Wales is destroyed. A familiar association with Wales is music, and particularly
singing - here it is ‘dead in his throat.’ Pattern, harmony, all suggested, all
destroyed. Progression towards death is pronounced in this verse - more so than
the others. Wasting, grimly, dead. Odd choice ‘phthisis’ highlighting strange and
foreign, like the Welsh words. Perhaps we the reader are also the outsider.

Concl: sum up your sense of the poem as a whole. The poem moves inexorable
towards death. A grim and startling view of this landscape. Surprisingly, not entirely
negative - perhaps the narrator is the intermediary… blah.

ALWAYS comes down to this:

Practical criticism =
See a pattern
look at the details
use the details to add to one’s idea of the pattern

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so, how do you find the tension in a poem?

see Ch3 p26 Getting hold of a poem as a whole

Your summary (in the intro) is based on:

getting a sense of what is going to matter in the poem. p 26

Look at the title: it can tell you much.

‘If Life’s a Lousy Picture, Why Not Leave Before the End’. Roger McGough.
‘Christmas Letter Home (To my sister in Aberdeen)’.

p28 ‘Adlestrop’ Edward Thomas - where the title gives you nothing, look at first few
lines.

and if not that, then look at the form.

‘This Day’ - the sentences drift along in a ragged way from one stanza to the next, lines
stopping rather awkwardly in the middle of a sentence. Here is the tension - it shows
things slightly out of control p29 there is a tension between harmony of nature at odds with
the lack of harmony in the form - a world out of control.

and so on. With difficult poetry - much of 17thC, because of language barrier, and such, -
look through the language and ignore the difficulties.

When confronted by difficulty, head in the opposite direction. p31

if you have a puzzling and complex structure, you need to find a very simple way of
gaining access to it. What sounds nice? What sounds nasty? By keeping the questions
as simple as this, you establish control.

PATTERNS OF OPPOSITION TO LOOK FOR IN A POEM

Positive / negative impressions
Patterns / lack of patterns
Harmony / lack of harmony
Love / death
Order / disorder
Nice images / nasty images PPHLON
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‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.’ Wordsworth. Have the
confidence to go for the pattern that you see in the opening lines. p34
The moment you have established this sense of a pattern you are in control both of
the poem and your reading of the poem.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.

Despondency in the opening, followed by soft and friendly images of nature.

Positive frame of mind vs negative frame of mind: there is the tension set up, to
explore as poem unfolds.

‘Kubla Khan’

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

pleasure dome (man-made, under human control) vs unnerving natural world -

caverns measureless, sunless sea.
Reasonable to think the larger issue might be the disordered complexity and
vastness of experience and how people try to build something, construct some kind
of order, in such a world. You may say poetry is establishing a kind of order in a
fathomless world.
_____________________________

So, you understand what the poem is about. How do you build a
response?

Move through a poem stanza by stanza. The poet will be building an

argument in steps.

Step 1: Reading and thinking

Don’t jump to the end. Don’t jump around.
An analysis of a poem is NOT just retelling the story and saying how true/ thought
provoking - BUT
niggle away at how the poet brings his subject to life
and in so doing
arrive at a more complex understanding of what is involved in the poem.

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Step 2: Start. Summarise, establish your sense of the central

opposition in the poem, set up the controlling idea for your essay
as a whole.
Intro:

Summary + tension (your sense of the central opposition in the poem) +

larger theme (the controlling idea for your essay as a whole)

‘The Lesson’ Edward Lucie-Smith

Summarise the poem. This helps us establish a firm grasp of it/ get the story out of the
way.
Concentrate on how it begins - do not get distracted by the end.
Look for a tension. One side will be obvious, the other implicit (probably). Here, insecurity
and sense of loss, being on one’s own
And a larger theme - here, securities and insecurities of childhood.

Step 3: Look more closely at the opening of the poem, trying to see
how the poet brings the theme to life.

Paragraphs:

Try to see how the poet brings this theme to life.

• Divide the poem into chapters (paragraphs). Either stanzas, or split the stanzas.
The clue to interpreting any detail is to look at it in the light of the tension already
established.
• Focus on two or three details in the opening lines, try to see how they contribute
to the poem, fill out and develop initial ideas
• and how they advance our overall grasp of the poem
Remember pphlon
security against insecurity (p40)
‘bald’ - as in unadorned as well as bald; the masculine images - boarding school, brown
tobacco jar; vs feminine images (tears) note the lack of women in the poem.

Continue on.

Step 4: Look at another section of the poem, trying to build on your

analysis of the poem’s details.
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Focus on a few details. No clever, flashy reading of them. On the contrary: relate each
detail back to the ideas we have already established. Thus we steadily accumulate a solid
and sensible reading of the poem.
Insecurity seems to dissipate a little - ‘grief has its uses’ - cynicism. The child is growing up
fast. He has acquired a degree of knowingness about the ways of the world. Rapidity of his
change agst the unchanging face of the school.
Cries for knowledge, shame, relief. Not grief.

So - the words chosen bring the poem to life. Consider too, the overall structure of
the poem. The way in which its formal qualities as a piece of patterned writing
complement, help to define, the theme of the poem. p41

This poem is anecdotal/ colloquial/ unrhymed. So where is the structure (pattern)?

Well, the very fact it is in the form of a poem indicates some structure and order (there is
some rhyme, held-over, and internal; stanzas) and this reflects that the poet has accepted
the discipline and order of the adult world. There is a disjunction between this formal
neatness and unfathomable death, but the child is moving towards the forms and manners
of the adult world (shape of the poem and learning from the experience to be cynical, to
use it.)

Step 5: Look at another section of the poem, trying to build on your

analysis of the poem’s details.
Look at the next section to build on your analysis of the poem’s details.
‘I was a month past ten’ - we see how young/ frail/ it moves us. Yet he is placed looking
back, he is now in the adult world. The tension here is that he has come to embrace the
masculine adult world or move within it anyway. He has absorbed some degree of cold
distance even whilst critical of it.

Step 6: Look at how the poem concludes.

It appears strange. When stuck, ALWAYS return to the pattern you have established so far
in order to interpret the puzzling details.
So, security, insecurity/ order, disorder/ child, adult/ masculine, feminine/

All the other eyes

Were turned towards me. Somewhere in myself
Pride like a goldfish flashed a sudden fin.

SZ: Why does he mention goldfish again? Idea of outsider on display, to be watched, idea
of colour - gold - that he has more life than those around him. Idea of movement ‘flashed,
sudden’ as opposed to eyes watching ‘indifferent.’ Also that he is the only one. And proud
of it.
So he is strangely secure in his difference. Reconciled. He isn’t one of them. He uses
them. Imposes his own order. This is adult. And some may say, feminine.

Peck & Coyle: ‘the line suggests a kind of arrogance, a belief in himself, which is similar to
the aggressive confidence he has encountered in the world at large…’ sudden fin - more
like a shark that goldfish, ending on note of hardness and aggression.
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Step 7: Sum up your sense of the poem as a whole.

The experience of loss could have affected the child in one of two ways: p43
- become desolate with the sense of loss
- or be dragged painfully, quickly into a world of aggressive values.
We see not just a memory of an incident, but the complex sense of childhood, of societal
values and how in part at least, he has come to share these values. The sense of the
person he has become is most obviously conveyed in the aggressive image at the end,
and also the reflective looking back…

So, these are the strategies we have used to unpack this poem:

Strategies to use in building a response:

• Build response in paragraph steps

• Start by summarising and establishing a central tension
• Establish a sense of any larger issue
• How do the words and phrases bring the tension to life?
• How does the structure complement and help define the
subject matter?
• Keep moving on details, but then, at every stage, pull back,
trying to add to the case you have been building
• At the end of each paragraph, you should be able to add to
your overall sense of the ‘issue’ in the poem
• It is ATTENTION TO DETAILS + BUILDING A LARGER
CASE that matters
• By the end, do you have a sense of how the poem works
and what it is saying?

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Step 1: Reading and thinking

Step 2: Start. Summarise, establish your sense of the central opposition in
the poem, set up the controlling idea for your essay as a whole. Intro
Step 3: Look more closely at the opening of the poem, trying to see how the
poet brings the theme to life. Para (stanza) 1
Step 4: Look at another section of the poem, trying to build on your analysis
of the poem’s details. Para (stanza) 2
Step 5: Look at another section of the poem, trying to build on your analysis
of the poem’s details. Para (stanza) 3 (maybe another after this)
Step 6: Look at how the poem concludes. Concluding stanza
Step 7: Sum up your sense of the poem as a whole. Concl.
p44 ‘Virtue.’

Step 1: Reading and thinking

SZ: Hmmm.
Step 2: Start. Summarise, establish your sense of the central opposition in
the poem, set up the controlling idea for your essay as a whole.
The title alerts us that this is a poem about virtue. We see that the natural world comes to
an end. Day finishes in night, spring also comes to a natural close, and the world too end.
However, the one thing that remains constant, is virtue.
Look at p45 - fuller. The poet talks about the ‘sweet day’ but after describing its attractive
qualities, moves to ‘dying’. Sweet rose, die. Just as spring, which we associate with
rebirth, will die. Obvious tension between attractive images and the threatening, disturbing.
Remember PPHLON or PHLOP-N this is the intro. Summary, tension,
theme.
Step 3: Look more closely at the opening of the poem, trying to see how the
poet brings the theme to life.
So, this will be stanza one.
‘Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,’ this is simple, and repetition emphasises this.
Concrete image, easy to understand. Suggests the mood and feel. Moves to the
portentous ‘The bridal of the earth and sky’. Puzzling so go back to pattern.
Attractive vs threatening. Beauty of life, fact of death. Joins earth and sky. Links nature
and the social institution of marriage. Both parts of a grand design. see the simplicity of
logic: ‘bridal’ = puzzling so we start from assumption that it must contribute to either the
positive or the negative side of the poem.
Step 4: Look at another section of the poem, trying to build on your analysis
of the poem’s details. Similar structure. But something going on about the rose

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that is more complex. ‘angry’ + rose seems to jar. The root in its grave. Death is not just an
enemy but entangled in the very being of the rose.
Often this happens in poetry: it sets up a tension, but as the poet explores the tension it
becomes more complex, even to break down as a tension. Just as in ‘The Lesson’ there is
no absolute split between the adult world and world of the child, here life and death are not
really opposites, for death is entangled in the very existence of life p47 as a positive
concept. Over and over again in poetry criticism the great advantage of
establishing your sense of a clear opposition in the opening paragraph
of an essay is that such a steady starting point enables you to
appreciate how the poet complicates this initial position as the poem
advances.
Step 5: Look at another section of the poem, trying to build on your analysis
of the poem’s details. ‘Sweet… sweet…sweet’ odd to repeat so much as if this day is a
trifle too rich - an excess. ‘thou’ of the first two stanzas has become ‘all’. Not just the day,
rose, spring must die, but ‘all.’ ‘box’ for spring is a surprise. Confined. As if there is
something limiting about mere earthly beauty. As if poet is sated with the beauty of life,
becoming more and more aware of the transitoriness of sensuous things, and
contemplating death more seriously.
Step 6: Look at how the poem concludes. Where a poem arrives may surprise. The
poet may start one place, and shift ground entirely. e.g. ‘The Lesson’. Poet shifts direction
here. Emphasis is not on what dies but on what lives. The pattern is reversed. ‘sweet’ still
used but to describe not ephemeral nature, but moral ‘virtuous soul’. ‘seasoned timber’ -
mature and what lasts. ‘coal’ contrasts with the bright start. But the delights of the world
are now in perspective, what matters is eternal things.
Step 7: Sum up your sense of the poem as a whole.
Begins in a simple manner: setting the delights of the world against the fact of death. Poet
makes us reflect though, on superficial nature of earthly things. Eternal is more important.
He has not said any of this directly - all conveyed by suggestion, by implication. Poetic
images have created meaning for us. Poetry is not the art of direct statement. We have
to infer meanings. Because the meanings are suggested, not stated, and because the
meaning shifts depending on the poem and the reader, a great deal may be said in a short
space. Substantial themes dealt with in the brief canvas of each poem.

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The Lesson - Edward Lucie-Smith

“Your father’s gone,” my bald headmaster said. 


His shiny dome and brown tobacco jar 

Splintered at once in tears. It wasn’t grief. 

I cried for knowledge which was bitterer 

Than any grief. For there and then I knew 

That grief has uses — that a father dead 

Could bind the bully’s fist a week or two; 

And then I cried for shame, then for relief.

I was a month past ten when I learnt this: 


I still remember how the noise was stilled 

In school-assembly when my grief came in. 

Some goldfish in a bowl quietly sculled 

Around their shining prison on its shelf. 

They were indifferent. All the other eyes 

Were turned towards me. Somewhere in myself 

Pride, like a goldfish, flashed a sudden fin.

Virtue - George Herbert

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky:
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
Thy root is ever in its grave,
 And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
         And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turns to coal,
 Then chiefly lives.

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