On Reading Poetry

Well, it's the start of a new semester, which means we'll be looking at some Creative Writing Craft points related specifically to poetry. It strikes me that there are a lot of people who are afraid of poetry--hesitant to write it, reluctant to read it. "But I don't get it," is a common concern raised by beginning writers when faced with the daunting task of interpreting a poem. So I want to spend a little time talking about how we read poems today.

Often people have very narrow ideas about poetry based on the short-lived fling they had with it in their high school literature courses. What they remember about poetry is this: it’s hard to understand and it rhymes (neither of which is generally true). And so these people decide that they don’t like poetry. But that’s kind of like swearing off fruit just because you aren’t a fan of white grapes, or deciding you don’t like music just because you don’t care for White Snake or giving up novels because you didn't like that one you read about a white whale. Shakespeare and Donne and Dickinson and Whitman and Frost and whoever else you read in high school are great. (I still marvel at Frost’s lines. And Shakespeare’s for that matter.) But if those poets don’t do it for you, there are many other great poets out there worth reading. There are also people who like poetry but feel self-conscious about responding to it. If you are one of those people, have no fear, the following is a brief guide for the uninitiated:

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First things first, you need to let go of the idea that you need to “get” or “understand” everything about a poem in order to have a reaction to it. In his excellent craft book On Writing, Stephen King talks about how he loves Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian (a book that uses language in poetic ways) despite the fact that “there are great whacks of it that I don’t fully understand. What of that? I can’t decipher the words to many of the popular songs I love, either.” This is a mentality I suggest we bring to the reading of poetry, as well. We are conditioned culturally to believe that writing only has value insofar as it can persuade us or instruct us to do something, build something, buy something. That writing might simply inspire an intellectual curiosity in us or make us feel something is a fairly treasonous concept (one that might  get a person locked up in the looney bin, or at the very least, laughed at for being a dirty hippy), and yet that’s how literature works. Poems are not math equations or an instruction manual from IKEA. You can’t digest them step-by-step in order to glean essential lessons from them and then discard them after the fact. And if you think that knowing exactly what the poet is referring to when he or she says, “They were death’s idea of twilight,/the whole notes of a requiem” or “Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue / Pour of tor and distances” or “It’s hard to milk a werewolf,” you are probably kidding yourself. Most people I’ve talked to understand (even appreciate) this novel idea. They seem drawn to it precisely because it is so different from what the rest of our life experience tells us. I teach classes full of students who like music, as King does, for no other reason than because it stirs them emotionally. Why must good literature be so different?

The truth is, how you respond to a poem depends on who you are as a reader. You don’t necessarily need to work very hard to “get” a poem; often it just affects you in some way. What you find powerful, enjoyable, heartbreaking, or poignant, may not be something the person next to you responds strongly to. And vice versa. However, sometimes, when you hear another person talk about a poem they really liked, it gains new meaning or appreciation for you—suddenly, it’s not as boring or confusing as you first thought. That’s the value of studying poems together rather than alone. Of course, this is not always the case—some poems will never resonate with you; that’s okay, too. That’s the second thing you need to know about reading poetry.

But how to respond when discussing poems in class or in your written reflections, that’s the real question, right? Well, here are a few things you can talk about:

Personal Reaction: After you’ve chosen a poem(s), consider how you relate to that poem personally. Does it express something you wish you could say, if only you knew how? Do you identify with the writer’s feelings in some way? Are you moved by the imagery or the language? Perhaps the story it tells creates an emotional reaction for you? (I defy you to read John Updike’s “Dog’s Death” and not have an emotional reaction.)

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Make Your Own Meaning: Perhaps the story the poem tells, or the images it uses, makes you think of a completely unrelated moment in your life. That’s fine. How did the poem manage to do that? Or maybe there’s some mysterious line that sticks with you, keeps you thinking, returning to the poem to read it over and over again. After all, just because a poem requires work doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad poem. Maybe there’s something abstract, experimental, or symbolic about the poem that’s like a puzzle, made more gratifying by the work you put into figuring it out. Or maybe the poem reveals itself a bit more with each reading. (I feel that way about “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by e.e. cummings.) Don’t ever feel self-conscious about positing your personal reading of a poem, and don’t self-censor. 

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Pick Apart the Language: Poems can make you feel something or imagine something without resorting to “artsy” language. Most poetic language is straightforward and natural on the surface, but surprisingly complex when you really dig in; it doesn’t force you to wade through it in search of meaning, but attention has been paid to word choice, syntax, rhythm. (Robert Frost’s “Walking Through Woods on a Snowy Evening” and Langston Hughes’s “Jazzonia” are good examples of this.) When you read a poem, don’t be afraid to focus in on its sonics (language and sound). In other words, don’t only take the poem as a whole; take its individual stanzas, lines, even words, and wonder over them. What devices is the author making use of—rhyme, alliteration, assonance, rhythm, word choice, line break, line length, white space, and so on? What affect do these choices by the author have on you as a reader?

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Consider the Poem as a Writer Would: What can you learn from the poem(s) you’ve chosen to respond to? What would you like to try in your own writing? What would you have done differently had you written the poem? When doing this, avoid binaries. Remember, you aren’t the arbiter of taste, and so it’s not really your job to determine whether the poem was “good” or “bad” in most instances. Likewise, knowing whether you  “liked” or “disliked” a poem is of limited value to you as a writer. If you can talk about how the poem works, where the poem turns, why the poem fails, etc., you’ll teach yourself something from it no matter what your personal reaction to it was. It can be hard to put into words what a single poetic choice accomplishes—do your best anyway. I once told a poet that I “loved her verbs” (it wasn’t even a pick-up line! She had all these great verbs in her poem—bopping and ambling and wafting and jang-jangling that really told me something about the speaker’s way of interacting with her surroundings). My comment sounded every bit as dumb as I feared it would—maybe a bit more—but later she told me it was the one thing that
helped her most when she went back to revise. And it has helped me since in 
understanding my own writing.

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Identify the Parts You Don’t Understand: I do this a lot when I respond to writing. If you don’t understand something, say so. Talk about what is confusing to you. Posit a few potential meanings without favoring one over another.

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You’ll find responding to poems easiest if you have the right attitude about it and if you have enough knowledge to talk intelligently about the things you read. My job this semester is to help you with the latter—to give you the language and instruction on poetic conventions that you can use to make sense of what is going on in the poems you pick up. As for the attitude thing, well, that’s all you. If you approach the work like it’s drudgery and resist taking any pleasure in what you read, convince yourself your never going to “get it,” it’s not going to be much fun. But if you welcome the challenge, then reading poetry will become natural, valuable, rewarding.

So what do you think, Dear Reader? Any thoughts on reading poetry? Why do you think we are so concerned with understanding what a poem "means?" How do you approach the challenge?