How Do I Read a Poem?

First, you must realize that there is never just one way to read a poem. Poetry is often written to evoke personal feelings, and your personal responses—your feelings about a poem—are not necessarily incorrect just because they seem off the wall. All poetry combines sound and sense; thus you should always be aware of the lyric elements in a poem—how the poem sounds to your ear.

Also, always be aware of connotation as well as denotation; all words have echoes and references beyond their immediate meaning, and quite often poets are not only cognizant of these echoes but are also employing them to help convey their meaning. Consider, for instance, “blue sky.” This denotes a weather condition, but it also connotes the possibility of someone or something being beautiful, serene, or heavenly.

Always identify the poem’s situation. What is said is always conditioned by where and when it is being said, and by who is saying it. Identifying the speaker and his or her context places his or her utterances in perspective. I have always found it helpful to imagine making a video of the poem. Imagine that you are going to make a film of a poem—what would you place in front of the camera. See the poem imaginatively through this lens.

Always read the syntax literally. What the words say literally in normal sentences is only a starting point, but it is the best place to start. Not all poems use normal syntax and grammar, but you should start reading the poem by paraphrasing (in plain syntax, rephrasing what the poem literally says).

Always consider what the title, subject, and situation make you expect or assume. Often poets will offer a title, subject, or situation as a clue to reading their poems. Although poets will often surprise readers by reversing expectations (the nature of irony), you should be conscious of where you are expected to begin. Take what the poet gives you.

Also, always be willing to be surprised. Like fiction writers, poets will often defy conventions and traditions. What is first suggested can possibly contradict itself by the end of the poem, or at least offer significant qualification or variation. Be aware that, instead of serenity and bliss, “blue sky” might ironically indicate emotional turbulence.

Always consider what is implied by the literary and cultural traditions behind the poem. Verse forms, poetic structures, and metrical patterns all have frames of reference, traditions of the way they have usually been used and for what reasons. Poets are especially close readers of other poets. Thus, when a poet writes an elegy or a sonnet, you can be sure that he or she is fully aware of the elegy or sonnet tradition. Quite possibly he or she is not only aware of Milton or Shakespeare, but that he or she is writing in response to their poems.

Always consider the poet’s cultural and historical context. As cultural artifacts, a poem is constructed in a particular time and place—and your time and place of reading of the poem occurs in a completely different time and place. Obviously, times change. Not only the meaning of words, but whole ways of looking at the universe vary in different ages and cultural perspectives. You should always be aware of your time and place and the poet’s time and place. A word he or she used might have had different denotations and connotations than its current and more familiar uses.

Always assume that there is a reason for everything. Poetry relies on an extremely careful use of words, and you should always assume that poets have not made mistakes in constructing their poems, that poets have verbal control of their texts. Since words are carefully chosen, always consider why a word choice seems unusual, surprising, or curious. Try to discern a pattern in the poet’s choices.

Always look up anything you don’t understand—unfamiliar words, or familiar words used in unfamiliar ways, references to places, people, events, or myths, anything that the poem makes use of.

Also, always use discussion as a tool for clarification. One of the best ways to read a poem is to read it with other people (especially reading it aloud). Sharing responses and interpretations always helps to clarify a poem’s meaning (or meanings). In some ways, even the most private, personal poems are public events, and you should not feel that you have to rely solely on your own assumptions and reactions.

Engl 20923, Lit and Civ II
Williams, Spring 2011
Images and Imagism

Imagery is a term used to refer to figurative language. An image is understood to be a reproduction of a form (a something or some one). Imagery refers to vivid language that creates mental pictures or impressions.

During the early part of the twentieth century certain modernist poets decided to focus on the imagery of their poems as an act of rebellion against the overwrought and exaggerated poetic language of the nineteenth century. These poets tended to condense their poems to specific sets of images and generally became known as Imagists (and their poetry imagism).

Thus Imagism is a doctrine and poetic practice of a small but influential group of American and British poets (who called themselves Imagists). Writing in the early decades of the twentieth century, the Imagists were led by Ezra Pound, HD, and Amy Lowell, and generally the Imagists rejected most of nineteenth-century poetry as being over written, overly sentimental, and overly conventional. The Imagists intended to create a new kind of poetry that developed a new clarity and exactness in the short lyric. Influenced by Japanese haiku, the Imagists cultivated concision and directness. Images—rather than asides or explanations—were intended to convey meaning. Imagists also preferred the looser cadences and rhythms of free verse rather than traditional meter. The typical imagist poem attempts to render as exactly and tersely as possible, without comment or generalization, the poet’s response to a visual object or scene. Often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor, or by juxtaposing a description of one object with that of a second or diverse object.

Consider Pound’s famous imagist poem:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd,
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Or William Carlos Williams’ famous imagist poem:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside white
chickens.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
--Wallace Stevens

Danse Russe
William Carlos Williams


If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,--

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

Words, Thoughts, and Eliot Quotes

Nihilism: a belief that life is essentially meaningless and without purpose or value, accompanied by a rejection of all religious and moral principles.

Solipsism: philosophic view that the self is all that can be known to exist., that only one’s mind is sure to exist, and that the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist.

Existentialism: a philosophical movement that developed during the early part of the twentieth century but became influential and active during the decades following WWII. In response to the chaos and destruction caused by two successive world wars, and as an extension of modernism’s rejection of traditional values and conventions, existentialist philosophers and writers rejected the optimistic rationalist and empiricist doctrines that assume the universe is a determined, rational, and orderly system that is intelligible to contemplative observers who can use their reason to discover that its natural law and as a guide for human activity. Existentialists did not believe that the universe was reasonable or understandable. Existentialists generally believed that the general state of all individuals was one of alienation, disorientation, and confusion resulting from the confrontation with an absurd and meaningless world.

Existentialists believed that physical, material being took precedence over philosophical idealism or contemplation. Existence is basic, and an individual’s knowledge or self-awareness is developed through his or her actual experience, which is at best partial and fleeting. Existence cannot be viewed objectively or in abstraction; it can only be seen in terms of the impact that specific experiences make on an individual. No individual has a predetermined place or function within a rational, orderly system, and everyone is compelled to assume responsibility for making the choices in his or her life, although there are no guides for making these choices. Thus individuals are always in a state of anxiety (often referred to as angst) arising from the realization of their freedom of choice, of their ignorance of the future, of their awareness of its manifold possibilities, and the ultimate finiteness and meaninglessness of existence. Nothingness both precedes and follows existence.

Quotes from T. S. Eliot:

Objective correlative: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative,’ in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” “Hamlet and His Problems”

“It appears likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult. Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.” “The Metaphysical Poets”

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.

All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

April is the cruellest month.

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. [mug:a stupid or gullible person]

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.

Home is where one starts from.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

From A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, 1588
Thomas Harriot

They are a people clothed with loose mantles made of deer skins, and aprons of the same round about their middles, all else naked . . . having no edge tools or weapons of iron or steel to offend us.

If there fall out any wars between us and them, what their fight is likely to be, we having advantages against them in so many manner of ways, as by our discipline, our strange weapons and devises, especially Ordinance great and small, it may easily be imagined: by the experiences we have had in some places, the turning up of their heels . . . running away was their best defense
I respect of us, they are but a poor people, and for want of skill and judgment in the knowledge and use of things, do esteem trifles before things of greater value.

Most things they saw with us, as Mathematical instruments, sea Compasses, the virtue of the load-stone [magnet] in drawing iron, a perspective glass [telescope] whereby was showed many strange sights, burning glasses [magnifying glass], wild fireworks, guns, books, writing and reading, spring clocks that seem to go of themselves, and many other things we had that were so strange unto them, and so far exceeded their capacities to comprehend . . . that they thought they were the works of gods then men, or at leastwise they been given and taught us of gods. Which made many of them to have such opinion of us, as that if they knew not the truth of God and Religion already, it was rather to be had from us whom God so specially loved, than from a people that were so simple.

“What Is Literature?”

Perhaps literature is definable not according to whether it is fictional or imaginative, but because it uses language in peculiar ways. . . . Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language . . . if you approach me at a bus stop and murmur, “Thou still unravished bride of quietness,” then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

What was specific to literary language, what distinguished it from other forms of discourse, was that it “deformed” ordinary language in various ways. Under the pressure of literary devices, ordinary language was intensified, condensed, twisted, telescoped, drawn out, turned on its head. It was language made strange.

The idea that there is a single “normal” language, a common currency shared equally by all members of society, is an illusion. Any actual language consists of a highly complex range of discourses, differentiated according to class, region, gender, status, and so on, which can by no means be neatly unified into a single homogenous linguistic community. . . One person’s norm may be another person’s deviation.

If we were to stumble across an isolated scrap of writing from some long-vanished civilization, we could not tell whether it was poetry or not merely by inspecting it, since we might have no access to that society’s “ordinary” discourses.

The context tells me that it is literary, but the language itself has no inherent properties or qualities which might distinguish it from other kinds of discourse.

It is true that many of the works studied as literature in academic institutions were “constructed” to be read as literature, but it is also true that many of them were not. A piece of writing may start off life as history or philosophy and then come to be ranked as literature.

In this sense, one can think of literature less as some inherent quality or set of qualities displayed by certain kinds of writing all the way from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, than as a number of ways people relate themselves to writing. It would not be easy to isolate, from all that has been variously called “literature,” some constant set of inherent features. In fact it would be as impossible as trying to identify the single distinguishing feature which all games have in common. There is no “essence” of literature whatsoever.

In any case, it is far from clear that we can discriminate neatly between “practical” and “non-practical” ways of relating ourselves to language. Reading a novel for pleasure obviously differs from reading a road sign for information, but how about reading a biology textbook to improve your mind? In many societies “literature” has served highly practical functions.

By and large people term “literature” writing they think is good.

Nobody would bother to say that a bus ticket is was an example of inferior literature, but someone might well say that the poetry of Ernest Dowson was. The term “fine writing,” or “belles letters,” is in this sense ambiguous: it denotes a sort of writing which generally is highly regarded.

The suggestion that “literature” is a highly valued kind of writing is an illuminating one. But it has one fairly devastating consequence. It means that we can drop one and for all the illusion that the category “literature” is objective, in the sense of being eternally given and immutable. Anything can be literature, and anything regarded as unalterable and unquestionably literature—Shakespeare, for example—can cease to be literature.

The reason why it follows from the definition of literature as highly-valued writing that it is not a stable entity is that value-judgments are notoriously variable. . . Just as people may treat a work of philosophy in one century and as literature in the next, or vice versa, so they may change their minds about what writing they consider valuable.

But it does mean that the so-called “literary canon,” the unquestioned “great tradition” of a “national literature,” has to be recognized as a construct, fashioned by a particular people for particular reasons at a certain time . . . “Value” is a transitive term: it means whatever is valued by a certain people in specific situations . . . we may in the future produce a society which is unable to get anything at all out of Shakespeare. His works may seem desperately alien . . . in such a situation Shakespeare would be no more valuable than much present-day graffiti.

The fact is that we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns . . . “Our” Homer is not identical with the Homer of the Middle Ages, nor “our” Shakespeare with that of his contemporaries; it is rather that different historical periods have constructed a “different” Homer and Shakespeare for their own purposes, and found in these texts elements to value or devalue . . . All literary works, in other words, are “rewritten,” if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them; indeed, there is no reading of a work which is not also a “re-writing.”

Excerpts taken from Literary Criticism, Terry Eagleton, 1983

Engl 20923, Lit and Civ II
Williams, Spring 2011

Modernism:

As a term, modernism is most often used to identify the most distinctive forms, styles, concepts, and sensibilities in literature and art from roughly WWI to the post-WWII years. Since it is a broad intellectual movement, modernism varies widely in specific features, but most critics agree that it involves a deliberate and radical break with the traditional bases of both Western culture and Western art. Modernists were writers and artists who questioned the certainties and standard truths that had previously provided support systems for all social organization, religion, morality, and the conception of the human self. Modernists were influenced by late 19th century thinkers, such as Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Darwin. They were especially influenced by the savagery and slaughter of WWI.

The modernist revolt against traditional literary and artistic forms and subjects manifested itself strongly after the catastrophe of WWI, which shook human faith in the continuity and foundations of Western culture. The inherited mode of ordering a literary or artistic work—and for that matter of ordering the world—assumed a relatively stable and coherent worldview. But there was a general shattering of traditional beliefs and foundational truths after WWI, and there was a general emergence of a belief in the futility and meaningless of life, that the world was characterized by disorder rather than order, by anarchy rather than stability. Experimenting with new forms and styles, modernists explored the dislocation and fragmentation of parts rather than the traditional artistic concept of unity. Modernist writers subverted the conventions of earlier prose fiction by breaking up narrative continuity, departing from standard ways of representing characters, and violating the traditional syntax and coherence of narrative language. Such techniques have obvious parallels in the violation of representational conventions in the modernist paintings of Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism as well as in the violations of standard conventions of melody, harmony, and rhythm by the modernist composers (Stravinsky, Copeland).

A prominent feature of modernism is the attempt to be “avant-garde,” a military term for “advance-guard.” Quite self-consciously, authors and artists attempted to, in Pound’s famous phrase, “make it new.” By violating accepted conventions and decorums, they undertook to create new artistic forms and styles and to introduce neglected, often forbidden subjects. Frequently avant-garde artists represent themselves as alienated from the established order, against which they assert their own autonomy. Their aim is often to shock the sensibilities of their audiences and to challenge the norms and pieties of bourgeois culture.

Literary Characteristics: free verse, stream-of-consciousness, objective correlative, imagism, multiple points-of-view, broken or fragmentary narratives, iceberg narratives, alienated characters, defiance of traditional values, taboo subjects, complexity.