Understanding English Poetry

 1. Reading & Responding

 2. Tone
 3. Speaker
 4. Situation & Setting
 5. Language
 5.1. Precision & Ambiguity
 5.2. Metaphor & Simile
 5.3. Symbol
 6. The Internal Structure
 7. External Form
 8. Meter
 Understanding English Poetry
 Reading poetry is not an intellectual and bookish activity.
 Reading poetry is about feeling.
 Reading poetry means responding to it.
 Responding to poetry if on a feeling level result
deeper understanding result pleasure
 For experienced readers of poetry, reading and
responding are nearly one and very close.
 Pleasure because of remembering something in our
own past then making connections between text and
our memories then responding more fully then reading
more accurately and improving our reading skills
 Understanding English Poetry
 Poetry can, more than other texts, sharpen reading
skills.
 Language in poetry is concise and compact.
 Human experiences are very concentrated.
 Poetry can be intellectual too, explaining ideas. But
the main focus is on feeling rather than on thought.
 Language in poetry is sharable: sharing feeling
between speaker and reader.
 Poetry expresses the inexpressible.
 Poetry captures the shade of emotion that feels just
right to a reader.
 Understanding English Poetry
 1. Reading & Responding in Practice:
 How Do I Love Thee?
 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
 Understanding English Poetry
 1. Reading & Responding in Practice:

 The Tally Stick

 Here from the start, from our first of days, look:
I have carved our lives in secret on this stick
of mountain mahogany the length of your arms
outstretched, the wood clear red, so hard and rare.
It is time to touch and handle what we know we share.

Near the butt, this intricate notch where the grains

converge and join: it is our wedding.
I can read it through with a thumb and tell you now
who danced, who made up the songs, who meant us joy.
These little arrowheads along the grain,
they are the births of our children. See,
they make a kind of design with these heavy crosses,
the deaths of our parents, the loss of friends.
 Understanding English Poetry
 1. Reading & Responding in Practice:
 The Tally Stick
 Over it all, as it goes, of course, I
have chiseled Events, History--random
hashmarks cut against the swirling grain.
See, here is the Year the World Went Wrong,
we thought, and here the days the Great Men fell.
The lengthening runes of our lives run through it all.

See, our tally stick is whittled nearly end to end;

delicate as scrimshaw, it would not bear you up.
Regrets have polished it, hand over hand.
Yet, let us take it up, and as our fingers
like children leading on a trail cry back
our unforgotten wonders, sign after sign,
we will talk softly as of ordinary matters,
and in one another's blameless eyes go blind.
 Understanding English Poetry
 1. Reading & Responding in Practice:
Think about the following Questions:
 Is How Do I Love Thee? abstract or concrete?
 The lover connects his/her love to some higher obligations. What are
they?
 Is The Tally Stick abstract or concrete?
 What is the main point of focus in each poem?
 What does the tally stick stand for?
 What are the similarities between these two poems?
 Which poem is preferable and more appealing?
 Understanding English Poetry
 2. Tone
 What the poem is about(a particular subject matter) may help us
to form the horizon of our expectations.
 But it never tells us wall we will find in a particular poem.
 We should be open to the poem and its surprises and let it guide
us to its end.
 We should listen to how the poem says what it says, this is the
tone.
 We should hear the tone of the voice who speaks the words.
 The voice is not the poet.
 To understand a poem, we do not need to read critics’
interpretations or the poet’s own comments.
 Poems contain within them what we need to know about its
theme and tone.
 Understanding English Poetry
 2. Tone in Practice:
 Aunt Jennifer's tigers
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool

Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie

Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
 Understanding English Poetry
 2. Tone in Practice:
Think about the following Questions:
 Why are tigers an appropriate contrast to the quiet and subdued
manner of Aunt Jennifer?
 What words in the text describe the tigers significantly?
 In what way is the tiger an opposite of Aunt Jennifer?
 In what way does the poem externalize her secrets?
 Why are Aunt Jennifer’s hands described as “terrified”?
 What clues does the poem give about why Aunt Jennifer is so
afraid?
 How does the poem make you feel about Aunt Jennifer? About her
tigers? About her life?
 How would you describe the tone of the poem?
 How does the poet feel about Aunt Jennifer?
 Understanding English Poetry
 3. Speaker
 Poems are personal.
 The thoughts and feelings they express belong to a specific
person.
 The voice is sometimes the voice of the poet. But not always.
 Poets sometimes create a “character” just as writers of
fiction and drama do―people who speak for them indirectly.
 Sometimes the character becomes the voice; therefore, the
expressed thoughts and feelings are those of the character
and not of the poet.
 Some time, through some specific terms and devices the
poet reveals that it is his voice speaking in the poem.
 Understanding English Poetry
 3. Speaker in practice
Think about the following questions:
 Who is speaking ?
 Are the poet and the speaker the same?
 What level of emotions do you see in the speaker?
 What is the ironical situation in the poem?
 What information does the speaker give about himself?
 How far is the poet from the speaker?
 Understanding English Poetry
 4. Situation & Setting
 Questions about speaker (Who? questions) in a poem always lead
to questions of Where? When? And Why?.
 Identifying the speaker is usually part of a larger process of
identifying the entire situation.
 The situation in a poem lies in questions such as “what is
happening?” “Where is it happening?” “Who is the speaker talking
to?” “Who else is present?” “Why is this event occurring?”.
 Sometimes a specific time and place is seen in the poem but
sometimes not.
 Some poems present a series of thoughts and feelings directly
in a contemplative, meditative or reflective way. These poems
do not set up any kind of action, plot, or situation at all.
 Understanding English Poetry
 4. Situation & Setting in practice
Think about the following questions:
 What facts do we have about the speaker of “My Last
Duchess”?
 On what basis do we form our evaluation of him?
 How does the setting contribute to the characterization?
 At what point of the poem do you become aware of the
precise situation?
 Understanding English Poetry
 5. Language
 Fiction and drama depend upon language and so does poetry, but in
poetry everything comes down to the particular meanings.
 In stories and plays, we are likely to keep our attention primarily on
character and plot. We usually do not pause over any one word as we
may need to in a poem.
 Poems are often short and use only a few words , therefore, they
depend upon every single word.
 Even in prose-poetry everything is distilled; only the most essential
words are there.
 Barely enough is said to communicate in the most basic way.
 Sometimes the most elemental signs of meaning and feeling are
used .
 But elemental does not necessarily mean simple, and these signs may
be rich in their meaning and complex in effect.
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.1. Precision & Ambiguity
 One of the ways to delve into the meaning of a poem is
to choose a key word upon which all poem is set up.
 A key word is chosen because it can mean precisely just
one thing or it may mean more than one thing.
 In other words, the importance of the key word involves
either its ambigutiy(an ability to mean more than one
thing) or its precision( exactness).
 This is close to the difference between denotation and
connotation. Denotation is the precise meaning of the
word while connotation has implications of emotional
attitude of the author or the reader.
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.2. Metaphor & Simile
 The language of poetry is almost always pictorial. Rather
than depending primarily on abstract concepts, poems
depend mainly on concrete words that create images in
our minds.
 Usually poems touch, among all five senses, the visual
sense first. Even when the images in a poem are auditory,
gustatory, olfactory , or tactile, first we try to set up a
picture from those words to have a more vivid impression
of what happens in the poem.
 Being visual in poetry does not mean describing
shapes,colors, and all details through exact verbs, nouns,
adverbs, and adjectives.
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.2. Metaphor & Simile
 Often the vividness of the picture in our minds depends
upon comparisons. What we try to imagine is pictured in
terms of something else familiar to us and we are askes to
think of something as if it were something else.
 These comparisons are figures of speech which include:
metaphor, simile, hyperbole, oxymoron, personification,
and some others.
 Simile: is a figure of speech that compares one noun to
another noun, usually with the words "as" or "like." A
simile can be as precise or as poetic as you want it to be.
Some examples of a simile: "She's as pretty as a rose" and
"I slept like a log.”
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.2. Metaphor & Simile
 Metaphor: also compare one thing to another in terms of a
different object or idea, often using ‘to be’ verb. Examples of
metaphors: "Her mind is a prison" and "The man is a devil.”
 Personification: This type of figure of speech gives human
characteristics to animals, things and ideas. Some examples of
personification: "The flowers were grateful for being watered"
and "The wind is howling.”
 The pictorialness of our imagination may clarify things for us,
scenes, states of mind or ideas, but at the same time it
stimulates us to think of how those pictures make us feel.
 Pictorial images might be denotative or conntative; they may
be precise or may channel our feelings.
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.2. Metaphor & Simile in Practice
 What figures of speech do you see in Shakespeare‘s
sonnet?
 What is the impression of these metaphors on you?
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.3. Symbol
 Symbol is something that stands for something else. The everyday
world if full of common symbols: a skull and cross bones symbolizing
danger or death, a cross symbolizing resurrection or death, and etc.
 In a very literal sense, words themselves are all symbols, but symbols
in poetry are those words that have a range of reference beyond
their literal signification and denotation.
 Some symbols are universal like a red rose meaning love or white
flags for peace. These are traditional symbols. These symbols already
stand for something before the poet cites them.
 There are some symbols which might be meaningful just in their
religious, national or geographical context: a star means one thing to
a Moslem poet which to a christain or Jewish one it might signify
something else.
 Some symbols are totally personal, private codes for the poet himself.
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.3. Symbol in Practice
 Is the poem ´The Sick Rose` about a rose or something
else?
 Is the rose a traditional symbol or a personal one?
 What do the images ´´bed, worm, and crimson joy``
connote?
 What is the main point of focus in the poem?
 Is the tone of the poem sad, jouful, threatening or what?
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.3. Symbol
 Symbol is something that stands for something else. The everyday
world if full of common symbols: a skull and cross bones symbolizing
danger or death, a cross symbolizing resurrection or death, and etc.
 In a very literal sense, words themselves are all symbols, but symbols
in poetry are those words that have a range of reference beyond
their literal signification and denotation.
 Some symbols are universal like a red rose meaning love or white
flags for peace. These are traditional symbols. These symbols already
stand for something before the poet cites them.
 There are some symbols which might be meaningful just in their
religious, national or geographical context: a star means one thing to
a Moslem poet which to a christain or Jewish one it might signify
something else.
 Some symbols are totally personal, private codes for the poet himself.
 Understanding English Poetry
 5.3. Symbol in Practice
 The Sick Rose is a symbolic poem; a poem in which the
use of symbols is so pervasive and internally consistent
that the larger refrential world is distanced, if not
forgotten.
 The rose is not part of the normal world that we
ordinarily see, and it is symbolic in a special sense.
 The poet does not simply take an object from everyday
world and give it special significance.
 The rose seems to belong to its own world, a world made
entirely inside the poem or the poet`s head.The poem
lives in its own world.
 Understanding English Poetry
 6. Picturing
 The Language of Description
 Understanding English Poetry
 6. Internal Structure
 For poets it is always difficult to find appropriate words but
more difficult that that is their decision where to put those
words, how to arrange them for maximum effect.
 One of the main questions has always been how words,
sentences, images, ideas, and feeling are to be put
together to have a certain effect on the reader.
 This question helps the reader notice the effect of
structural elements in a poem.
 There are always patterns of structure that poems fall into,
sometimes because of the subject matter, or the intended
effect, and etc.
 Often poets consciously decide on a particular structure.
 Understanding English Poetry
 6. Internal Structure
 The internal structure of a poem can be:
o Descriptive Structure: determined by the requirements of describing
someone or something
o Discursive Structure: organised in the form of a treatise, argument, or
essay
o Dramatic Structure: consisting of a series of scenes, each of which is
presented vividly and in detail; it borrows the structure o plays
o Imitative Structure: mirroring as exactly as possible the structure of
something that already exists as an object and can be seen
o Narrative Structure: based on a staightforward chronological
framework
o Reflective/Meditative Structure: pondering a subject, theme, or
event, and letting the mind play with it, skipping from one sound to
another, or to related thoughts or objects as the mind receives them.
 Understanding English Poetry
 7. The Way a Poem Looks
 Poetry has traditionally been thought of as oral—words to be said,
sung, or performed rather than looked at.
 Stanza breaks and other kinds of print spaces are important to
guide the voice and mind to a cleare sense of sound and meaning.
 But poetry can also be related to painting and visual arts:
o Some poems are written to be seen rather than heard and their
appearance on the page is crucial to their effect. These poems might
include specific symbols, digits, diagrams, and tables.Examples of this
kind are many in postmodern poetry.
o Some other poems are composed in a specific shape so that the poem
looks like a physical objects. These poems are called concrete poetry or
shaped verse. They are playful excercises that attempt to supplement or
replace verbal meanings with devices from painting and sculpture.