Tool Kit for Reading Poetry

Poetry is highly artificial language, and in order to understand it we need some awareness of the techniques poets use--the arts they employ--to make verse sound different from normal spoken language. While there are many of these, we'll concentrate especially on two: sound effects (meter, rhyme, alliteration, and the like), and figurative language (metaphor, metonymy, personification, etc.). We also need to remember, as we're focusing on artifice, that poets also use language just as we do: they parse it into sentences, phrases, and clauses, and those give meaning to the verse as well. Indeed, the meaning of the poem can be said to be generated by the tension between "natural" language--the language of everyday speech--and "artificial" language--the techniques of poetry. So when you read a poem, you need to do several things at once. Here, however, I'll suggest that you do them in order.

One: read the poem out loud. Don't stop to worry about the verse form or the syntax right now, except inasmuch as these help you figure out where the sentences are going and what the words mean in context. Listen to the sounds of the words, noting rhythmic patterns and patterns of repeated sounds. Note where sentences begin and end--do these coincide with line beginnings and endings? Jot down your general sense of the poem's meaning.

Two: read the poem again, out loud or silently, paying close attention to the literal meaning of the words. Note where sentences begin and end; figure out the syntax; get a sense (if relevant) of who does what to whom. Note that poetic practice often inverts or alters conventional syntax, putting the subject last, for example. If necessary, "translate" the sentences into conventional spoken English. Jot down your specific understanding of the language of the poem.

Three: read the poem again. This time, pay attention to line breaks, sound patterns, etc. I'll describe metrical variation later; for now, mark syllables that seem to be stressed or accented in each line, mark pauses in the verse created by commas, dashes, or other punctuation within a line (a pause within a line of verse is known as a caesura). Do the sentences end, or break, at the end of the line? This is end-stopped verse. Do they continue across line breaks? These are enjambements--lines that run on, forcing us to continue past the break the poet has created to finish the thought. Do the lines rhyme--that is, do they end similar sounds, in repeated patterns? Are there internal rhymes within the lines, or patterns of alliteration (repeated consonant sounds)? What is the relationship between these various sound patterns and the syntactic sense of the poem you already achieved?

Four: read the poem again, focusing on the use of figurative language. What sorts of metaphors (implicit comparisons) does the poet employ? Other common poetic figures include metonymy--the substitution of one term for another, through some associative logic such as part for whole (synecdoche), proximity, or common association. White House can be a metonymy for President, for example; or sail for ship; or crown for king. In the case of both metonymy and metaphor, the thing referred to is the "tenor," the thing used to make the reference is the "vehicle." In the above examples, White House is the vehicle, President the tenor; crown the vehicle, king the tenor.

Note also the image patterns employed in the poem. Language that creates an appeal to one of the five senses is called imagery--visual imagery, for example, relies on repeated appeals to sight.

NOW: Put all this together. Which effects (sound patterns, figurative language, syntactical shifts) work together, and which seem to undermine each other? What happens when lines consistently break in the middle of sentences, for example? What happens when the poem sets up a particular sound pattern, and then violates it? What happens when it doesn't?

Reading poetry is a learned set of skills. It will take time to do all these things, and more time to put them together meaningfully. With practice, it enriches the experience immeasurably, and gives you reason to go back to the same poem over and over, looking for new things (or rediscovering old ones).