HOW TO READ A POEM

1
HOW TO READ A POEM

• With an open ear and an open heart. . .

2
POETIC STEPS

• Read straight through to get a general sense of
  the poem read it aloud, too
• Try to understand the poems meaning and
  organization (the title, is there a speaker)
• Find out the meanings of all of the words
• Consider the poems setting and situation
• Is there a basic form? How does it develop?
• What is the poems subject, i.e., theme (the main
  idea)?
• Prepare a paraphrase and explication.

3
Paraphrase Explication

• How to paraphrase (word by word)
• Rewrite the poem in prose in your own words (like
  doing a translation, use the dictionary and/or
  thesaurus m-w.com)
• Be sure the paraphrase is accurate and
  comprehensive (dont miss out anything)
• Rewrite your passage, remaining faithful to your
  understanding of the poem (i.e., dont use the
  poets words).

4
Contd. . . .

• How to explicate
• Write a passage (line by line, stanza by stanza,
  or image by image) that demonstrates your
  understanding of the poem
• This should be your interpretation, in other
  words, between the lines.
• Should show how the parts relate to the whole
  meaning.

5
Our First Poem/Poet

• Caribbean poet
• Derek Walcott
• http//www.cc.nctu.edu.tw/pcfeng/Walcott/Walcott.
  html

6
Love After Loveby Derek Walcott

• The time will come
• when, with elation
• you will greet yourself arriving
• at your own door, in your own mirror
• and each will smile at the others welcome,
• And say, sit here. Eat.
• You will love again the stranger who was your
  self.
• Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
• to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
• all your life, whom you ignored
• for another, who knows you by heart.
• Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
• the photographs, the desperate notes,
• peel your own image from the mirror.
• Sit. Feast on your life.

7
ELEMENTS OF POETRY

• What is poetry?. . . .
• . . .a composition in verse that is
  characterized by a highly developed form, the use
  of rhythm and the employment of heightened
  language to express an imaginative interpretation
  of a situation or idea.
• Shaw, Henry. Dictionary of Literary Terms. New
  York McGraw Hill Book Co.,

8
Word Choice

• Poets may vary syntax (word order) to create
  poetic effects (i.e., not subject verbobject,
  prose-like)
• Poets may explore repetition (i.e., parallelism
  or anaphora)
• Poets consider diction (high, or formal, vs.
  low, or slang/idiom)
• Poets consider connotation and denotation (levels
  of meaning)
• Poets orchestrate the sound of words or word
  groups (cadence groups) with (assonance,
  repetition of vowel sounds/OR alliteration,
  repetition of consonant sounds) to produce the
  music of the poem

9
Word Choice, contd.

• From Literature. . .
• Poets always try to make individual words carry
  as many appropriate and effective denotations and
  connotations as possible. Put another way, poets
  use packed or loaded words that carry a broad
  range of meaning and associations.
• You might say the poet
• mines language for meaning.

10
Tone The Creation of Attitude

• Tone derived from tone of voice in the oral
  presentation
• Tone is how the writer creates attitude, i.e.,
  the writer/speakers attitudes towards something
  are expressed
• We study how this reflects word choice and ideas
• Is there self-awareness?
• What is the tone created? Sadness, anger, love,
  humor, irony?
• Created through control of connotation and
  denotation
• Relies also on common ground of assent (from
  Literature, those interests, concerns, and
  assumptions that the writer assumes in common
  with readers so that an effective and persuasive
  tone may be maintained).

11
THE USE OF IMAGES

• Imagery Poetrys Link to the Senses

12
TRY TO EXPERIENCE WHAT THE POET EXPERIENCED. . .

• An image is simply a word picture. . .i.e.,
• Rose What do you think of when you think of a
  yellow rose? Look inside. . .what do you remember?

13
The role of imagery. . .

• Images trigger the imagination to recall mental
  pictures, memories, sense impressions
• Images help poets communicate with the reader
• Images authenticate, or make real
• Images should be exact (you should feel them)
  and be apt (appropriate for the subject).

14
KINDS OF IMAGES

• IMAGES travel along the senses. . .
• Visual (sight)

15
KINDS OF IMAGES

• Auditory (hearing)

16
KINDS OF IMAGES

• Gustatory (taste)

17
KINDS OF IMAGES

• Tactile (touch)

18
KINDS OF IMAGES

• Olfactory (smell)

19
KINDS OF IMAGES

• Kinetic (movement)

20
HOW AN IMAGE WORKS

• Literary critic I.A. Richards writes
• An image is made up of the vehicle,
• the concrete thing that IS the image
• (i.e., a tree with autumn leaves). . .
• . . . The meaning that it carries (i.e., a tree
  in autumn symbolizes old age, coming winter),
  what Richards calls the tenor.

21
IMAGERY a picture says a thousand words!

• Autumn is here, the climax of life blazes forth
  in color, the cold of winter, its deathly cold,
  is yet to come. . .

22
FIGURES OF SPEECH (or tropes, or rhetorical
figures) verbal constructions the poet uses to
convey meaning

• Metaphor - an implied comparison is made between
  two unlike things that actually have something
  important in common it expresses the unfamiliar
  (the tenor) in terms of the familiar (the
  vehicle). When a poet writes, "Love is a rose,"
  "rose" is the vehicle for "love," the tenor
• Simile poet uses the words as or like to
  make the connection between the two things that
  are being compared. For example, dancing with a
  poor dancer is like making chess moves
• Paradox a contradiction that is truthful
• Apostrophe speaker addresses an imagined
  listener
• Personification human traits given to objects
  or abstract things
• Synecdoche a part of something stands for the
  whole
• Metonymy substitute one thing for another
• Oxymoron - a mixture of words that have
  contradictory or sharply incongruous meanings,
  i.e., cruel kindness, a thunderous silence,
  military intelligence
• Pun wordplay based on different words having
  similar or same sound (i.e., ghosts like
  elevators because they lift the spirits
• (. . .see the list of Figures of Speech in your
  coursepack).

23
Finally, consider the poems THEME

• What is theme? It is, put quite simply, the main
  idea of the composition.
• In literature, main idea theme
• In journalism, main idea angle
• In academic writing, main idea thesis
• As we read the last cluster of poets on our
  reading list, ask yourselves, What is the theme
  of each poem?
• Is there any commonality between them?
• QUESTION CAN WE BRING BACK POETRY FROM THE
  MARGINS, AS OCTAVIO PAZ MENTIONED IN THE POWER
  OF THE WORD?

24
And the final question as we leave our poetry
unit. . .

• AFTER WATCHING THE CD PRESENTING A LIVE
  PERFORMANCE OF THIS OLD MAN, DO YOU BELIEVE
  THAT POETRY CAN MAKE THINGS HAPPEN?
• WILL POETRY LIVE ON?