How Do You Read Poetry?
Notice that this is a question, not a statement because I am not sure I know how. This will cover my current thoughts as a man who is interested in poetry yet finds it oft-confusing.
In preparation, I read Harold Bloom’s The Art of Reading Poetry, Matthew Arnold’s In Defense of Poetry, Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read Lyric Poetry (from his How to Read a Book), and some online sources. As a result, I believe I can draw out three primary reasons people do not enjoy poetry. As the first two sources on my list show, poetry critics are (or at least come off as) unapologetically pretentious. Matthew Arnold, instead of explaining what makes great poetry, quotes several lines he likes and ends by saying, “These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry…”
I do not doubt that “that Miltonic passage” is very fine and possesses, “the very highest poetical quality” but it means little to me. After reading this essay and Bloom’s one could imagine that reading poetry requires some hidden knowledge to understand rightly.
On the other hand, poetry, in this age, has a reputation for being bad and largely for a feminine audience. Both make sense when the most common exposure to poetry is teenage love poems. However, if men like C.S. Lewis can enjoy poetry the rest of us can manage.
The third obstacle I see is what I found online. The advice they gave was to dissect the poem and uncover its rhyme scheme like I was taught to do in school. There are various methods of doing so. Like the TPS-FASTT (Title, Paraphrase, Speaker, Figurative Language, Attitude, Shifts, Title (revisited), Theme) method. Using this method you read the poem and then do analyze it by going through each letter of the method. Quite simply, I am not going to do that. That will not bring me joy. When I read a poem before I go to bed I will not pull out pen and paper and run through an 8-step process to break down Frost’s Wind & Window Flower. Understanding and addressing the negative position of why not to read poetry let us turn to the positive, why you should read poetry.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined the difference between prose and poetry as, “Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.” The great value of poetry is that it adds beauty in a quick, compact manner. I have been rereading Andrew Marvell’s The Mower to the Glowworms. I chose this poem for no other reason than something about it caught my ear as I listened to it.
The best pieces of advice that I saw in regard to reading poetry come from Mortimer J. Adler and Harold Bloom. They are as follows
- Read the poem twice, the first time read all at once, continuously, not stopping to make sense of it. The second reading should be out loud
- Memorize a great poem. Obviously, you should only do this if you already enjoy it.
The difficulty in reading poetry is that it must be read with the ear while being seen with the mind. As a result, you will have to read it slower than prose. This is also why performing a second reading aloud will help. Using The Mower to the Glowworms as an example, you may miss the alliteration of, “Living lamps by whose dear light…” from the first line but you will catch it when it is spoken aloud. And for me (I have a strange appreciation for alliteration) it makes the mental picture of a lightning bug performing its role as a living lamp lighting the field of the titular mower all the more beautiful.
The final piece of advice relates to memorization or at least familiarization with the poem. Bring a poem with you into your life. I did not memorize Marvell’s poem, but at this point, I am quite familiar with it. I was out for a walk the other day and came upon a field that had at least one hundred lightning bugs in it. As I stopped to watch I could not help but admire these “country comets” with the “officious flames” and when I reread the poem that night I could not help but bring the natural beauty of the scene with me into the poem.
In conclusion, poems use rich imagery to convey a story, emotion, or picture to us and we need to put in a little work to truly understand it, When we do so (if it is a good poem) we are rewarded with a deeper understanding and appreciation for beauty.
The final thing I should mention is that poetry often attempts to communicate a story. As a farewell I leave you with the story of a mower talking to his friends, the lightning bugs as they light the way in the falling dusk; and he reflects on them and his new love.