Chapter 4

Reading and Understanding Poetry

Reading poetry
• Reading poetry differs from reading other literary texts such as novels
or plays. Because of its condensed, compressed language and ideas, it
requires slow, careful reading, tasting and relishing every line, word,
and sound to realize its significance, individually and as part of the
poem. Moreover, a poem has many aspects (including music, diction
with its denotations and connotations, style, form, punctuation,
lineation, figures of speech, etc.) in addition to the meaning (theme),
so it serves to pay attention to the aspects one by one (separately) as
well as in combination with the other ones.
Reading poetry
• On Page 29, you have some steps for reading poetry, which can be explained as follows:
• 1) You should read a poem slowly and several times to enjoy it better and gain a better understanding of its ideas and
the significance of its different aspects.
• 2) You should read the poem aloud to yourself to experience its sounds with their rhythm and/rhyme, and ‘taste’ the
musical devices with your tongue to realize whether there is alliteration, consonance, or assonance here, for example.
• 3) Of course, your enjoyment of the poem’s music shouldn’t detract from your engagement with its other aspects such
as the poem’s theme and grammatical structure, which might be standard with some variations or it could be
idiosyncratic (strange and peculiar). Also attention should be paid to the poem’s vocabulary with its different senses.
• 4) You should have a good dictionary to look up the meaning of difficult words and make sure of the different possible
meanings of familiar ones. You should consider any ‘deeper’ shades of meaning (connotations) by thinking of the reason
why this specific word is used in comparison with other synonyms and any cultural associations the word may have,
especially according to Western/European culture or the culture of the language in which the poem was written.
• 5) Finally, read the poem with passion/love/enjoyment and not simply because it is required for the course or for the
test, even if it is so. The basis for understanding the poem and writing about it is enjoying it. So you have to develop a
positive attitude to the poem before you start reading it.
Lineation and punctuation
• An aspect of the poem whose significance can be explored is the relationship between lineation (the
shape/length of lines) and punctuation. Reading a poem aloud involves paying attention to line ends
and choosing the right amount of time to stop at the end of a line, before moving on to the next line,
according to the punctuation or lack of it there. For example, in “The Man He Killed” (page 30), you
can notice that some lines are not separated by punctuation marks and a line continues to the next
one as one sentence. This can be seen in the first stanza. There is no punctuation mark between lines
1 and 2, and there is only a comma between the second and the third line. This is called
enjambement, where one sentence does not end in one line and continues into the next one. We
have to stop briefly at the end of one line before moving on to the next one, but do you stop for the
same period of time for each line end? No! If you don’t have a punctuation mark you stop more
briefly than if you have a comma, for example. Also, you stop for a longer period of time if you have a
full stop, semicolon, colon, exclamation mark, a dash, or if you move from one stanza to another. Of
course, these are all brief stops anyway, but they comparatively differ, from one type of punctuation
to another. Your reading aloud of the poem should reflect these niceties, especially that they are
related to the purpose of lineation and punctuation, and these aspects’ relationship to the theme and
the poem’s aims in terms of its technique(style).
Understanding poetry
• There are a number of elements to consider when reading a poem, and they help in
understanding it. Also, you may include them in your essay in a suitable way, whenever they exist
in a significant way. Some of these elements were covered in course ENGL 130, and they include:
1) Speaker (also called ‘persona’ or ‘voice’): This could be the poet her/himself but not necessarily
so, because poets sometimes assume the identity of another person/character when they write a
poem. It is safer to use ‘speaker’ instead of ‘poet’, in your writing, because you cannot be sure the
poet is speaking about her/himself. To describe the speaker, you need to mention any details
included or suggested in the poem, especially whether it is first person or third person, and the
speaker’s social role or profession (father, teacher, witness, sailor, lover, soldier, etc.) if available
or can be gleaned from the poem. You can also talk about the speaker’s age, psychology, and
temperament (mood/attitude), which can also be tackled with the tone, to be studied later.
Further, you can analyse the speaker’s way of thinking and feeling about something, whether it
reflects a clear, ‘twisted’, or ironical view of ‘reality’, bearing in mind there are always different
ways of viewing reality and the truth.
Understanding poetry
2) Situation
This is basically the occasion which has prompted the poet to write the poem.
What has triggered the poet to write the poem? What purpose (in terms of
the readers) does she/he seek by writing the poem? What does she aim to
show/reveal/explore/depict (portray) by composing the poem? For example,
the poet/poem may seek to mourn the death of an important person,
commemorate a significant event, or describe a situation, an experience, a
landscape, or an aspect of life/nature or the world in general. It may explore a
philosophical idea or reveal the deeper feelings or a speaker, so the situation
is linked to the theme, and if you cannot find the poem’s occasion, at least
you can talk about its theme in general and the events/ideas it presents.
Understanding poetry
• 3) Setting: This is similar to setting in fiction, and it is the time and place when and where the
events of the poem happen. However, we can add the atmosphere of the poem, which includes
the feeling that is being associated with the place and time, and this is important, because it is
part of the poem’s theme since it reveals its tone, how the speaker views or presents the poem’s
subject.
• 4) Theme: As you already know this is the central idea around which the poem revolves and it is
typically reflected in the other aspects of the poem (music, diction, form, punctuation, figures of
speech, etc). This is not necessarily a moral lesson that you can personally draw from the poem.
It can be an idea simply that is not related to any advice (what somebody should or shouldn’t
do). Also, it does not have to be a specific idea you can get out of the poem but simply a
description of something (an aspect of daily life, nature, technology, pain, excitement, etc).For
example, instead of using “We should understand other people.” or “We must not live in
illusions”, you can say “The poem explores the implications of not understanding other people”,
or “Living amid illusions may disconnect a person from everyday reality”.
Understanding poetry
• 5) Pattern and musical devices: We already know musical devices, which refer to the repetition of sounds to create a musical effect, and
when two of them, assonance and consonance, are combined, they result in what is called rhyme. Also, when repetition and variation
are combined they form what is called meter. As for the pattern, it is the layout of the poem, whether it is all one stanza (continuous) or
consisting of more than one stanza (stanzaic), rhyme scheme, as well as fixed forms such as the villanelle or the sonnet.
• 6) Poetic diction and figures of speech: Diction refers to the specific, meaningful use of words in a poem, and it can be analyzed in terms
of denotations and connotations, which we have already studied in Chapter 2. Every word in the poem has specific significance and has
to be understood in the context of the other words in the poem and in comparison with the other possible alternatives outside the
poem, in the language in general. In addition, because of the condensed quality of poetry, a word may carry many different meanings,
denotations and/or connotations, so you have to be attentive to and appreciative of all the possible meanings a word may have in a
poem by considering the different possible interpretations that a poem may invite. Regarding figures of speech, they are artistic ways to
supplement or replace the direct expression of meaning in a poem. There are different types of them including metaphor, simile,
personification, apostrophe, symbol, irony, etc., and we’ll be covering them later in the course.
• 7) Criticism and evaluation: Finally as a reader you will have to evaluate the poem in terms of it achieving its aims in relation to its
readers, their reading experience, and the impact the poem has had on them, mentally and psychologically. You should be able to
answer the following questions: 1)What is the central purpose of the poem (What does it seek to clarify, discuss, analyze, present,
represent, or depict? What feeling or attitude does it aim to trigger or produce in readers, or simply show to them, and why?)2) How
important is the purpose? How crucial is it for readers to achieve this goal by reading the poem? What significant effect would it have on
them?3) How fully has this goal been achieved in the poem? Some poems/poets have a specific aim but because of the poor quality of
the poem or how simple or confusing or inconsistent it is, it fails to achieve its aims, so the reader does not reach the intended objective
of the poem at the end of the reading experience.
Writing about poetry
• There are different ways and skills of writing that you need to master in order to understand a poem
and write an essay about it. These include:
1) Paraphrasing: Here you rewrite the poem, with all its details and ideas, in prose, in your own words,
going over each line and stanza, as if translating the poem into a more accessible language for you and
other readers to understand, at least superficially. For this writing, you don’t have to understand the
poem completely or get exactly its theme. All you need to do is to know the surface meaning of words
and lines to express them more directly. However, there is a meaning under the surface of the obvious,
dictionary one, but you are not concerned with it at this stage. You just re-express what you see on the
page, the surface meaning that is in front of you, without considering its deeper meaning. Paraphrasing
also involves simplifying the grammar structure, for example retaining omitted pronouns or making the
tense more consistent, so instead of complex or twisted forms of grammar in poetry, you re-write its
ideas in standard, simple grammar. Further, you may have to change figures of speech into simple,
direct language. To sum up, paraphrasing can be regarded more or less like a longer or extended form of
summarizing a poem, so instead of mentioning only the most important two or three ideas of a poem (in
a summary), you mention all or most of its details, one by one (in a paraphrase).
Sample Paraphrase
• Below is a paraphrase of Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” on Page
35, and it illustrates to compose this type of writing, which is like rewriting the
poem in your own words:
• “The first green colour in plants is precious and it is nature’s hardest colour to
keep. A plant’s early leaf is as valuable and beautiful as a flower, but it retains this
beauty or value only briefly. Some time later, as its colour changes, the leaf loses
its charm, becoming simply a leaf, without a specific value, just as Eden lost its
charm for Adam when he suffered sin and regret there. The same happens with
fresh, inspiring dawn, which degenerates into a drab, regular day. So nothing that
is lovely or precious lasts for a long time in our earthly existence.”
• As you can see, the paraphrase may have explanation of ideas but it is more
concerned with details than with their analysis.
Summarising
• As you know, summarising means expressing the gist or the most important ideas of a text, so it
would be in a shorter form than the original text. It’s similar to paraphrasing but here you
mention only the most important ideas. Depending on the length of the poem, it might include
three to five sentences. In order to prepare it, you need to read the poem carefully a number of
times to get its theme (central idea). Then you look into the poem’s details, and choose only
the ones most related to the theme, the ones most useful in clarifying, supporting, and
showing aspects of the theme. If the poem has more than one stanza, you look at each stanza,
and take one idea from it to include in the summary. An example of a summary is provided in the
book, at the bottom of Page 34. The poem “Acquainted with the Night” describes the speaker’s
experience of roaming the city at night. In the poem, he mentions a weather condition, the
places and people he sees. However, these details are not specified in the summary; they are
referenced in a very general way, so the summary simply says “The speaker is one who is used to
walking at night to the city limits. He has been in every weather condition, and has been in every
part of the city …” The summary does not specify the weather condition or the places the
speaker passes by. It seems more like a conclusion of the poem’s ideas.
Outlining
• This skill of writing involves mentioning the basic ideas of a poem (looking into
their significance), and analysing the various aspects supporting the theme of a
poem. You should start by discussing the significance of the title and the thesis
statement of the poem (what the poem is about). Next you can elaborate on the
theme and describe the mood/tone as it reflects or supports the theme. In order
to do this (expounding on the thesis statement and the theme) you go over the
poem stanza by stanza and line by line. This outline can be enriched by explaining
the figures of speech and other poetic devices used in the poem, especially as
they support the theme. At the end of the outline you can summarise the poem’s
ideas, and you can evaluate the poem in terms of it achieving its goals. You can
also describe your personal experience of reading the poem, mentioning the
feeling it gave you while reading it. Finally, you can comment on the poem’s
beauty and the personal experiences it evokes in you.
Writing an essay about a poem
• Writing an essay about a poem, a skill that you need for your tests and exam, is very much similar
to outlining. You include here (in an essay) the information you include in an outline. One of the
differences is the specific organization of the essay, which has to have an introduction, body, and
conclusion. In the introduction, you start by talking about the poem’s topic in general, using
hooks (questions to draw the reader’s attention) or interesting facts if possible. You analyse the
significance of the title and its word choice. Then you express the thesis statement, what your
essay is about in general with the aspects or ideas that you will explain in the body. Later, each
aspect or idea will be explained in one paragraph of the body. Each paragraph of the body should
start with a thesis statement on an aspect/idea from the introduction’s thesis statement. Then
you explain the aspect/idea in the context of the poem, using word connotations and figures of
speech, as well as other aspects of the poem such as tone, imagery, form, and language (e.g.
grammar and punctation). At the end of the essay, there is a paragraph for the conclusion, where
you summarize the essay’s ideas, each of which you’ve explained separately in each paragraph
of the body. Also you can give your personal opinion and judgment of the poem, how you view
its artistic value and beauty, and your feeling about it. You can describe your personal
experience of reading the poem. Samples of essays on poetry will be sent separately to you. You
can observe them and write a similar one yourself.