Reading and Understanding Poetry

The biggest mistake in approaching a poem is in reading the poem too fast. Poetry, in general, is meant to be heard and rewards the ear with its rhythms and sounds. Therefore, it helps to read poetry aloud, and slowly. As students read poetry, they should listen to the lines and words of the poem in order to find the emotional center. What does the poem want the reader to feel? While an essay appeals first and foremost to the intellect, poetry appeals first to the heart.

When reading poetry aloud, a mistake many people make is automatically reading each line as a separate unit, as though each line were a sentence. Instead, students should read the lines as though the line breaks were not there, but give a slight emphasis to the words that appear at the ends and beginning of lines. A line ending in a comma should get a slight pause, a longer pause for a semi-colon. A line ending in a dash has a more emphatic pause, usually with a stronger emphasis on the words following the dash. Lines ending in a period or colon come to a full stop. These rules also apply for stanza breaks, but the pauses and stops at the ends of stanzas will be slightly lengthened. Lines that stop are called end-stopped lines. Lines that flow to the next line are referred to as enjambed.

The following lines are from the beginning of William Shakespeare's "Sonnet VIII." The first line should move naturally to the second and the second to the third. The third line should end with a dramatic pause (dash), and the fourth line comes to a full stop (period).

THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold—
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

For poems with regular rhythm, students should not automatically read the lines in a singsong fashion unless the poem is really emphasizing the line rhythms. The lines from Sonnet VIII above follow fairly regular rhythms, but when reading the poem, the rhythms should be subdued and not singsong. However, Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz" almost forces the reader into a singsong rhythm to match the "dance" of the small boy in the poem:

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lines all come to a stop, which adds to the emphasis on the rhythms in the lines and is one of the clues that the rhythms need to be emphasized.

When first reading a poem, a person will often want to experiment with different ways of reading the poem to decide what is the best tone. The key is for the reader to try to get a sense of the emotion expressed in the poem: sadness, joy, anger, reflection, fear, confusion, despair, sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek humor, and so on. Very short lines can slow a poem. Very long lines, especially when those lines do not end stop (come to a full stop) can create an energy that pulls the reader through the poem like a river flowing over a waterfall.

The sound of the poem often becomes a vehicle for the imagery contained within the poem. As students read a poem, they should consider how the use of sound within the poem "colors" the imagery and provides a context for "seeing" the imagery. Often these clues lead to an understanding of the ways in which the imagery within the poem becomes a metaphor for the meaning emerging from the poem.

Interpretations grow out of

the emotional center of the poem (tone);
the sound of the poem
- through the sound of words
  - Onomatopoeia -- words that sound like what they describe--buzz, crackle, pop
  - Cacophony -- harsh sounding letters or syllables
  - Dissonance -- harsh sounding words
  - Euphony -- pleasant or soothing sounding letters, syllables, or words;
- through line endings and grammar; and
- through repetitions
  - of meter (rhythms and rhymes, syllables, stresses) and form (sonnet, villanelle, sestina, haiku, and so on);
  - of sounds within words
    - Alliteration (beginning sounds),
    - Assonance (vowel sounds),
    - Consonance (consonant sounds), or
  - of words themselves--the same or similar words repeated;
- the imagery of the poem and how the images work as metaphors (always clearly see the image first before assuming any metaphorical meaning)
- other conventions of literary texts; and
- the background, experience, history, and culture of the setting, context, or speaker of the poem.
An interpretation develops as the reader
- analyzes how the elements of the work individually function;
- analyzes how the elements of the work interact to create a single impression or to move toward a common goal;
- analyzes how the ideas contained in the work either contradict or reinforce the reader's ideas about the world;
- is challenged in his or her efforts to understand and appreciate the work; and
- is moved by the language and drama of the work.
The goal is to find the emerging pattern within the work that all of the indivdual elements of the work are building towards.

Steps to writing an analysis

Students should
- Begin by reading the work through once at a normal pace out loud.
- Record their feelings after they finish the poem and briefly describe what the work seems to be about.
- Read the poem again, but slowly and write out a summary of the work in "plain sense" words.
- Read the work again, making notes of
- Look for a pattern of relationships within their notes. How do the things in the notes fit together? Do the notes suggest a particular way of looking at this work?
- Make a list of all the things that seem to fit together into a particular way of looking at the work.
- Combine items on the list that go together, and list the items in an order that makes sense and helps in understanding what the work seems to be saying.
- Convert these notes into an outline.
- Write out a draft that explains the meaning of the work following the outline
- Rewrite the draft to make it smoother, clearer, and grammatically correct (which may require multiple rewrites).

Steps to writing an analysis