BACKGROUND: Reading a Poem

Beginnings--The Idea

Since poets go over their poems many times during composing--maybe dozens of times across years--before considering each poem fit to publish, you should also reread a poem several times before considering that you understand it. But each time you will probably notice different things about the poem.

At first, people read a poem to see what it says and maybe what mood it creates. Then people try to see what images come to mind while reading the poem--and if each mental picture fits with their first impression of what the poem means. This may take a deliberate effort to translate images ("metaphor," "simile ," "personification," for instance) into plain English--noticing what is stated in the poem, as well as seeing the "connotations " or what is implied by the image.

For example, when Robert Burns describes his beloved in these words, does he mean that she's "thorny"?

O my Luve's like the red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June

Probably not! At least, if he's smart. So how is his beloved like a flower? The rose is relatively rare and delicate; it needs to be treated with care. Being "newly sprung" implies that, as a fresh bloom, the rose is young. So what do these traits have to do with his beloved? Maybe she's uncommon ("rare"). Maybe she should be treated with courtesy and gentleness. Maybe she's young, or young to love (innocent), or just new to him.

So translating the images takes quite a bit of time and thought to figure out what meanings probably fit the poem's context and to reject those that probably don't.

Eventually, readers probably try to work out a complete paraphrase of the poem--realizing that they are stripping the meaning away from the crafted wording of the poem for the sake of putting it in terms they can understand.

Given all these preliminaries, readers eventually try to capture the idea of the poem in a sentence or two--to state its theme, the meaning they are supposed to carry away as a final impression of the poem. Both paraphrasing and forming a statement of theme require double-checking against all of the poem, especially the ending.

Many beginning readers mistakenly stop with the idea of a poem, believing they've mastered the poem. Advanced readers will grapple with the craft of the poem. Assuming that nothing in the poem is accidental, then everything in the poem is a clue to its complete meaning--including its structure; its rhythm, rhyme, and other sound effects; and its symbolism, if any.

Structural clues to a poem's meaning come from the assumption that, to craft a poem well, poets take advantage of places where emphasis occurs to put important words there--and that variations in the structure yield important clues to meaning. For instance, in any English sonnet, lines 8-9 and 11-12 are traditionally places where the thought turns or the tone shifts. (See the sample Italian-style sonnet below.)

Subtle variations in the structure of a poem emphasize potentially important clues to the theme. For example, in sonnets, every even-numbered syllable in the 10-syllable lines is supposed to be somewhat louder than the syllable before and after it. So the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 10th syllables should be louder than the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th syllables. But a poet can't change the way a word is normally pronounced to fit this "rhythm." For example, even though it is a translation, consider the sample sonnet below. The sixth line begins with the word "flashing," which is louder in its first syllable--not the second. The variation tells us that her glance is significant--plus the two lines spent describing her glance--plus the fact that this is the last (and climactic) image before the poet turns to his grief for her removal from him by death.

The rhyme of this sample poem follows the Italian pattern. Granted it's a translation, but the only rhyme that is "off" comes at the end of the crucial 8th line: Everything sensory about her has lost its feeling because she's dead. Maybe the translator just got lucky? Not. Whether he fashioned that imperfect rhyme consciously or subconsciously, it fits a line that the poet must choke to speak.

In the sample sonnet, why did the translator use "great" instead of "large" to describe the "tempest" at the end of the 3rd section? The answer, I suppose, has to do with the other words in the poem that begin with the letter g. In the second section, Petrarch describes Laura's hair as "gleaming" and "golden," as well as her "flashing . . . glance." These images of her contrast sharply with the "grains of dust" that her body will soon become and his resulting "grief." This "alliteration" (repeating consonant sounds) frames and increases the contrast between the second and third sections of this poem.

Similarly, why are there so many short /a/ sounds in the second to third lines of this poem? (What are the odds that 8 words will have 7 short /a/ sounds, which is what happens in the second line of the sample sonnet? The odds must be rare enough to assume it's not just coincidence.) What in line 2 merits such emphasis through sound effects? (Repeating vowel sounds is called "assonance.") "Arms," "hands and feet" are what we use to feel and move and make things--and look at the effect they had on him!

A "symbol" is a thing that stand for an idea. In the sample poem, the "paradisal dance" suggests all sorts of spirals, from the rotation of the planet itself to the movement of people literally dancing to the actions of lovers to the actions of people in many kinds of cooperative endeavors. Is there something cosmic in this phrase? Is it supposed to echo, or be an allusion to, the Medieval theory of the "music of the spheres," the notion of an unchangeable harmony among the planets? Which do you think the "glance" of his "angel" reminds Petrarch about?

When you study a poem to write about it, any and all of these considerations may occur to you and get into your notes in order to establish your full appreciation of the poem as a work of art. So, merely stopping with the idea of the poem sort of turns it into a slogan or a sermonette, doesn't it?  It's not a good idea to reduce any work of art to a simple or familiar formula; instead, the good works diverge from simple moralizations--and so should any statement about the idea or theme of a poem.

SUMMARY of Steps for "Reading a Poem"

1. Read for the idea.

2. Read for the mood.

3. Read to check imagery against theme.

6. State a theme for the poem that is consistent with all of it.

7. To appreciate the craft of the poem, assume that nothing in it is there accidentally.

8. Emphasis is built into a poem's structure.