# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  How To Analyse Poetry

## Scheherazade

Recently there have been discussions as to how we analyse and interpret poetry (or should?) so I wanted to hear all your opinions on the subject as well as the methods you have been taught at school.

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## chmpman

This was posted in another thread, I can't remember by who:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light 
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

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## Scheherazade

What a fitting way to respond, chmpman! A poem about how to study poetry! 

 :Biggrin: 

Love this part:


> But all they want to do
> is tie the poem to a chair with rope
> and torture a confession out of it.
> 
> They begin beating it with a hose
> to find out what it really means.

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## mono

How to analyze poetry? Jeepers creepers, I have no idea!  :Biggrin: 
Different poems by different poets can certainly range in difficulty of trying to understand what they intend on the purpose of the subject, progress, mood, and any moral of what they write. Just as writing poetry seems an undeniable art, reading poetry, attempting to understand it, and finding one's own meaning in it also seems an art. I say this only because a lot of poetry (and all art in general - paintings, sculptures, music, etc.) seems personalized by its readers, regaining a meaning that, perhaps, a poet did not intend, for better or worse; the fusion of art and the perceiving mind seem almost in unity when a reader feels the chills and goosebumps of a heart-staggering poem, inevitably smiles or the eyes well up with tears, gaining the greatest affinity and agreement with its perceived subject, even though the art appeared created by someone else.
Somehow, I feel as though more poetry seems personalized than analyzed to find the original intention of the poet; suddenly, the reader identifies with the poet, thinking 'exactly my thoughts' or 'I could not have written that better myself.' In terms of analyzing, one can utilize a whole plethora of methods; nowadays, footnotes in books provide much help in referring to any allusions made in poetry, especially if the allusions refer to another art piece that the reader has not encountered.
Sometimes, as odd as it sounds, while reading poetry, I will whisper it to myself to attempt noticing any rhythm or beat; with a rhythm or beat, a poet may write with certain words prominently noticed and with emphasis not as easily readable without hearing (such as in 'Kubla Khan' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or most poetry by Emily Dickinson).
Just as a building may consist of several bricks, poems, of course, consist of many words - each word, frequently to the not-so-indolent poet, seems placed there for a specific reason, supporting the rest of the poem. Even if one word appears slightly out-of-place or awkward, except in cases for a desperate rhyme, I recommend questioning yourself of 'why use that word rather than this seemingly suitable synonym?' Perhaps the word has multiple other uses that refers to a subject in the poem, but also another _something_ indirectly (almost always seen in poetry by Sylvia Plath).
For finding the mood of a poem, try to notice any rhythm of syllables often noticed while reading aloud, and the overall use of adjectives and adverbs. In most poetry, sadness and humor seem the two most easy emotions and moods to detect, probably because they also seem the easiest to express. How can you notice this? Particularly by the word usage that will outline the subject; the specific word usage can even make a happy subject seem depressing, or a sad subject appear ironically joyful. Out of all of the poetry written, a lot of the first-generation and second-generation Romantics use a lot of easily-analyzed mood and emotion in their work.
The moral, if any, seems the most difficult to find in a poem. Not considering myself a master, by any means, of reading poetry, and not wanting to sound too cliché, allow yourself to get involved with the poem; notice any characters, try to relate with them, think of what they think, and their physiognomy, just as in any common piece of literature, especially novels. Morals/ethics in poetry have always existed, particularly in a lot of ancient Greek poetry, but also in the Romantic and Realist eras, and it seems to have made a huge comeback, in my opinion - try reading Robert Frost, for example - full to the brim with morals and ethics.
Again, this only outlines my frequent habit of reading poetry, and trying to analyze it. I just noticed how much I have typed, and I apologize in advance for its length, hoping I provided at least a little help for anyone seeking.  :Smile:

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## amanda_isabel

how to analyze a poem????

well, our english teacher last year said we had to read the entire poem, then go bac to the first stanza. in the first stanza read the first two lines and figure out a connection between them, then connect the two lines with the third and connect them and so on until you get to the end of the stanza. you already have an interpretation for the first stanza. do the same with the second and when you're through with the second stanza connect it with the first. repeat the process till you finish the entire poem.

it makes sense but i don't really follow it step-by-step.

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## ktd222

I've always analyzed poetry in this simple way:
-mmm...the poem has a passive voice here...i wonder what it's function is?
-look, the author has weird syntax here...i wonder how that changes the meaning?
-mmm...look at this statement: 'and such as were made prayers in the name of Christs, that shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility'...doesn't this translate into something?
-look...it's 'mute Ghost'...and not mute Jews...isn't this odd? How does that relate to the rest of the poem? Why is this important?
-Is this a literal light? mmm...

And so on...

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## Scheherazade

> I've always analyzed poetry in this simple way:
> -mmm...the poem has a passive voice here...i wonder what it's function is?
> -look, the author has weird syntax here...i wonder how that changes the meaning?
> -mmm...look at this statement: 'and such as were made prayers in the name of Christs, that shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility'...doesn't this translate into something?
> -look...it's 'mute Ghost'...and not mute Jews...isn't this odd? How does that relate to the rest of the poem? Why is this important?
> -Is this a literal light? mmm...
> 
> And so on...


Thank you very much, ktd. It is very nice of you to provide an example as well!  :Smile: 

Recently, I have realised that I usually read to get a general understanding of a poem and only after I achieve this, I can go back and concentrate on individual lines and references... but I have to admit, if I don't like the initial reading, I am very likely to cast the poem aside (unless it is part of my studies).

Do you like reading the commentaries by critics on poems?

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I read the poem. Then, I read the poem. Then, I read the poem again. Then I go do something else. Then I read the poem again. I repeat this sequence until I start to feel I understand the poem - then I DEFINITELY read the poem again.

When I say 'read', I mean 'read aloud' - even if only in a whisper (declaiming on the bus can be embarrassing  :Biggrin: ) - poems are meant to be spoken, not just silently absorbed. Poetry has texture when it passes the tongue and lips - you can't get this from silent study. If you can, read it ALOUD, rather than merely aloud. You can't appreciate the rhythm of a poem without speaking it IMHO.

After all of this, I (sometimes) read what other people say about it and often realise that I've missed huge chunks of meaning - but I also usually find I've come to know the poem intimately and have gleaned at least some of the 'accepted' interpretations, as well as a whole host of my own impressions, which may or may not be shared by others.

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## ktd222

> I read the poem. Then, I read the poem. Then, I read the poem again. Then I go do something else. Then I read the poem again. I repeat this sequence until I start to feel I understand the poem - then I DEFINITELY read the poem again.
> 
> When I say 'read', I mean 'read aloud' - even if only in a whisper (declaiming on the bus can be embarrassing ) - poems are meant to be spoken, not just silently absorbed. Poetry has texture when it passes the tongue and lips - you can't get this from silent study. If you can, read it ALOUD, rather than merely aloud. You can't appreciate the rhythm of a poem without speaking it IMHO.
> 
> After all of this, I (sometimes) read what other people say about it and often realise that I've missed huge chunks of meaning - but I also usually find I've come to know the poem intimately and have gleaned at least some of the 'accepted' interpretations, as well as a whole host of my own impressions, which may or may not be shared by others.


Obviously I agree about reading some poems outloud as well.

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## Riesa

> Do you like reading the commentaries by critics on poems?


Occasionally the commentary of certain 'poem of the week' critics can make me want to shoot myself or them.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> Obviously I agree about reading some poems outloud as well.


It's not at all obvious to a lot of people. Sad but true.

Analysing a poem without reading it aloud is like analysing a symphony from the manuscript - you miss so much.

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## superunknown

Well, I think chipman got it down pretty well: a poem is not about trying to find the "hidden message." If it were, it would be like a riddle, and it would lose all its value as soon as you discovered the answer, as happens with any riddle. But you can read a poem hundreds of times, analyze the hell out of it and still love it. An analysis of a poem shouldn't come down to "in this poem, Wordsworth laments the death of his dog when he was a child" because this essentially implies that if you don't know anything about Wordsworth or his dead dog the poem has no value whatsoever. Ultimately poetry is a form of art, and art is there to celebrate itself. In the words of Oscar Wilde, "all art is quite useless." It's not really the place of a poem to preach, as something like an essay is much better suited for that. Of course, many poems do have some sort of preaching message, like Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est," but the central point of the poem is the language itself: the fascinating thing about it, and the thing that makes it a truly great poem, is that through the usage of nothing other than words, Owen brings forth an incredibly dark, depressing, stifling, and hopeless atmosphere, and therein lies the beauty.

It's always good to be able to analyze poetry on a technical level as well. For example, to stick with "Dulce et Decorum Est," take a look at the syllables: I bet you'd never noticed before that this poem is in fact in iambic pentameter, and uses the typical system of poetic feet, which organizes the syllables into pairs in which the first syllable is unstressed, and the second stressed. Now, here come those little ingenious things that only those who really analyze it closely notice: take a look at the word "coughing" on the second line. Because by the iambic pentameter of pairs in which the first syllable is unstressed and the second stressed, this forces you to put the accent on the second syllable of the word, so that you end up with "coughING," which, and here you get to see the subtle genius of Owen, creates a very realistic coughing effect. Owen uses the iambic pentameter again to his advantage: look at the second stanza, in particularly the words "fumbling" and "stumbling." With the iambic pentameter, both of these words result in lines with 11 syllables that end in unaccented syllables which force the reader to fumble and stumble when reading them. It's worth studying poetry to see these sort of things, as you gain an even deeper appreciation for what the poet is doing: it's sort of like, while you can enjoy the sound of music, you never understand the full extent of a musician's genius until you learn to play an instrument and you learn music theory. So with poetry it's always good to see all the technicalities.

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## ktd222

> Thank you very much, ktd. It is very nice of you to provide an example as well! 
> 
> Recently, I have realised that I usually read to get a general understanding of a poem and only after I achieve this, I can go back and concentrate on individual lines and references... but I have to admit, if I don't like the initial reading, I am very likely to cast the poem aside (unless it is part of my studies).
> 
> Do you like reading the commentaries by critics on poems?


I've read a lot of commentary critics on poems over the years. And not many commentaries about a single poem is ever the same. I've also got, which I think a lot of people here have, an Anthology book with a section on how to study poetry. And that is what I use as a basis to get into a poem.

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## superunknown

> It's not at all obvious to a lot of people. Sad but true.
> 
> Analysing a poem without reading it aloud is like analysing a symphony from the manuscript - you miss so much.


No kidding. Especially when it comes to people like E.E. Cummings - you're hopelessly lost if you don't read him out loud. My favorite Cummings poems are "she being Brand" and "ygUDuh" for that very reason: with "she being Brand" you can have so much fun reading it out loud by constantly changing the speed at which you read it as Cummings indicates, and "ygUDuh" is just a brilliant and hilarious interpretation of drunken colloquial speech. I didn't know what "ygUDuh" even said until I read it out loud, and then I was just cracking up.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

(In reply to post #12 above)

Very valid points super. But I would take issue with a few points in your analysis of DEDE. This is one of my favourite poems, which I delight in having the excuse to post in it's entirity.  :Biggrin: 




> *Wilfred Owen
> 
> Dulce Et Decorum Est
> *
> _Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
> Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
> Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
> And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
> Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
> ...


You are not meant to pronounce 'coughing' wiith the stress on the final syllable - it's a trochaic substitution - the stress falls on 'cough', causing a break in the rhythm, as you suggest, but NOT through an unnatural phrasing of the word. Owen uses several other substitutions, trochaic, spondaic and pyrrhic in this poem.

As an example, in the line, "GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling," Owen uses spondees in the first 4 syllables which are all stressed; a pyrrhic substitution in '-sy of'; and ends with a female ending in fumbling - the unstressed '-ling' falling off the tongue. All of these are long established poetic forms - Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, and any other poet that has ever used iambic pentameter has employed them. They augment the simplicity of 5 regular iambic feet, adding colour and movement. 

I quite agree that Owen employs these tricks to brilliant effect in this poem - but I suspect that there is far more going on than you realise, given your last post.

For me though, ultimately, the _real_ beauty of this poem is the way that it sends shivers of horror down my spine and brings tears to my eyes every time I read it and the way that this effect is amplified tenfold whenever I read (or hear it read) aloud. You can analyse why it works till your blue in the face but in the end, Owen's skill lies in far more than technical ability and following rules - it depends on the inbuilt instinct that a true poet has for when to break those rules - that can't be taught.

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## ktd222

> Well, I think chipman got it down pretty well: a poem is not about trying to find the "hidden message." If it were, it would be like a riddle, and it would lose all its value as soon as you discovered the answer, as happens with any riddle. But you can read a poem hundreds of times, analyze the hell out of it and still love it.


Good, poems usually don't have hidden messages. But poems do display the author's art, and sometimes it's hard for us readers to identify and appreciate what the author has 'made use of,' if we only read the poem a few times. Some poems just keep giving everytime you read it. 




> An analysis of a poem shouldn't come down to "in this poem, Wordsworth laments the death of his dog when he was a child" because this essentially implies that if you don't know anything about Wordsworth or his dead dog the poem has no value whatsoever. Ultimately poetry is a form of art, and art is there to celebrate itself. In the words of Oscar Wilde, "all art is quite useless."


It could if he had phrases like, 'my childhood dog' or the title is 'Lament of My Childhood Dog.'  :FRlol:  I don't agree with Mr Wilde. I feel art can uplift someone's emotions and can empower people. 




> It's not really the place of a poem to preach, as something like an essay is much better suited for that. Of course, many poems do have some sort of preaching message, like Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est," but the central point of the poem is the language itself: the fascinating thing about it, and the thing that makes it a truly great poem, is that through the usage of nothing other than words, Owen brings forth an incredibly dark, depressing, stifling, and hopeless atmosphere, and therein lies the beauty.


I agree the poems purpose is not to preach. 

edit.....

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## Scheherazade

> It's always good to be able to analyze poetry on a technical level as well.


*hangs head in shame*

Unfortunately, since leaving school, I find myself less and less worried about this aspect of poetry. Not because I find it unimportant but because I find looking into a poem to grasp its meaning (and at times assign new ones of my own, which were not probably what the poet him/herself had in mind).



> Occasionally the commentary of certain 'poem of the week' critics can make me want to shoot myself or them.


 How so?  :Biggrin:

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## Riesa

> How so?


with a thirty ought six.  :Wink:

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## ktd222

> For me though, ultimately, the _real_ beauty of this poem is the way that it sends shivers of horror down my spine and brings tears to my eyes every time I read it and the way that this effect is amplified tenfold whenever I read (or hear it read) aloud. You can analyse why it works till your blue in the face but in the end, Owen's skill lies in far more than technical ability and following rules - it depends on the inbuilt instinct that a true poet has for when to break those rules - that can't be taught.


Thats a good measuring stick for how good a poem is.  :Nod:  
A great poem for me is both the above you mention, and the power of the word(s) to come to 'life' when one reads those words. Ultimately, to transcend the author and time.

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## superunknown

> (In reply to post #12 above)
> You are not meant to pronounce 'coughing' wiith the stress on the final syllable - it's a trochaic substitution - the stress falls on 'cough', causing a break in the rhythm, as you suggest, but NOT through an unnatural phrasing of the word. Owen uses several other substitutions, trochaic, spondaic and pyrrhic in this poem.
> 
> As an example, in the line, "GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling," Owen uses spondees in the first 4 syllables which are all stressed; a pyrrhic substitution in '-sy of'; and ends with a female ending in fumbling - the unstressed '-ling' falling off the tongue. All of these are long established poetic forms - Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, and any other poet that has ever used iambic pentameter has employed them. They augment the simplicity of 5 regular iambic feet, adding colour and movement. 
> 
> I quite agree that Owen employs these tricks to brilliant effect in this poem - but I suspect that there is far more going on than you realise, given your last post.
> 
> For me though, ultimately, the _real_ beauty of this poem is the way that it sends shivers of horror down my spine and brings tears to my eyes every time I read it and the way that this effect is amplified tenfold whenever I read (or hear it read) aloud. You can analyse why it works till your blue in the face but in the end, Owen's skill lies in far more than technical ability and following rules - it depends on the inbuilt instinct that a true poet has for when to break those rules - that can't be taught.


I definitely agree on that last paragraph of what you said. Like I said in my post, the true value of the poem comes in the incredibly sombre, chilling, and depressing atmosphere it creates, but I think it's always interesting to examine the technical aspects as well and a truly in-depth analysis of a poem isn't complete without going at least slightly into this.

As for the pronounciation of "coughing," that was something I drew out myself and perhaps wasn't intended by Owen (not that we'll ever know), but due to the fact that this method works perfectly for the first line, I thought that Owen could have implied this in the second line and taken advantage of the special effect created by mispronouncing "coughing." Certainly that method of pronounciation is no longer applicable by the second stanza, I agree on that much. And I've also noticed how other poets you've mentioned have messed around with iambic pentameter. I particularly love Shakespeare's usage of it in that sonnet in which he says that he wishes he could write a poem for a woman, but is unwilling to do so because he doesn't have the necessary skill (I forget what it's called). His deliberate poetic clumsiness in that sonnet is just brilliant.

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## Virgil

It so happens I gave my thoughts to someone not too long ago, so I have some of my thinking on this at my fingertips. This is a little bit of an expansion of those thoughts. I haven't read any of the previous posts yet, so perhaps I may repeat something. I divide this into four catagories. I'll save what I find to be the most important for last.

1.Learn poetic techniques. There is no easy way to absorb this. Osmosis won't work. Get a book or perhaps several on the craft of poetry and learn meter, form, symbolism, imagery, etc. Every time you read a poem identify the elements, whether it ultimately means something or not. Go line by line, word by word, syllable by syllable. You have to know them so they become intuitive, know them so that you can almost see the poet writing his work. This requires a lot of work and time. And if you live to be 44 like me and you've been doing it for over 25 years it does almost become intuitive. But there is always more to learn.

2. Learn the english language (or whatever language you are working in), it's history, it's grammer, of course vocabulary, it's transitions from old english to middle english to renaissance english to contemporary, it's sounds, it's phonemes. Learn foreign languages (which I am conspicuously poor at), and their relationship to english. Bring your knowledge of different fields to the table, the language of gardening or science or engineering or whatever interests you. I've been playing around with an idea of something set in machine shop, using the language of machinery, which can be quite beautiful in its own way. If a poet uses the language of a field you are not familiar with, you'll have to look it up. If you are readng poetry of chivalry, you will have to learn the sub-language of horseback riding and medevil arms. Always remember that poetry is charged language. The poet has to do something to the language to make it poetry. The other thing I would recommend under this catagory is understanding rhetoric. Poetry is a sub-set of rhetoric and it absolutely helps to know rhetorical devices from all types of composition. Unfortuantely they don't really teach this in depth in colleges anymore.

3. Learn aesthetics, the learning of what makes something beautiful. And you can divide this into two parts. (a) The history of aesthetics (and I do not mean literary criticism) from Aristotle to Horace to Loginus to Philip Sidney to Wordsworth. They have identitfied the various reasons of what makes something beautful and it will be helpful when you approach any work of art. (b) Learn the techniques of aesthetics, whether from art or music or literature. For instance there are five ways (that I know of) any artist progresses with an idea: theme, development, repetiition, contrast, and variation.

4. Break down the poetic work into logical sections to understand the thought pattern of the author. I find this to be the single most important means of analyzing any work of art. Analysis is an act of inductive reasoning. You are piecing together from elements to formulate a complete thought. The way the mind formulates that is inductively. I didn't think this up. This is the central method of Aristotle in his poetics. What are the links (narrative, parallel, contiguous, developmental, etc.) between the elements of a work are critical. I listed this last because I wanted to emphasize it, but it is almost always the first thing I try to do when I come across a work for the first time. Notice I haven't mentioned literary criticism or whatever fads are currently taught in colleges. I consider myself not warped by grad school mentality.

And finally write poetry yourself. It's the only way you can understand the pressures a poet feels as he constructs a work. In English classes I could always tell the students who took creative writing classes from those who didn't. The approach to analyzing a work was clearly different.

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## Petrarch's Love

I should begin by saying that I think every poem is approached and analysed in a slightly different way, since analysing a poem is a lot like getting to know a person. Some poems you have an almost instant understanding of, while others require some time and extra attention and understanding before you appreciate them. That said, I think I'll just write out how I commonly approach poems in general. The one thing I always do when analysing a poem is to read it multiple times--usually a minimum of two or three. I'll outline a typical series of readings:

1. When I very first read a poem it is almost never with any kind of critical eye. I approach it in a way very similar to music. It's all about listening carefully to the sound of the words and just sensing way they come together, the way their meanings resonate with me, the feelings and images they conjure. I hardly ever articulate anything about the poem in a first reading. I just experience it. 

2.When I read it again it's usually the complete opposite of my first reading. I pay little attention to the "music" of the verse, and concentrate instead on what the most basic primary literal meaning is--what the poem would say in plain, straightforward prose. That may sound obvious, but I'm always surprised at how important a step it is to just look carefully at what exactly is being said (and what is not being said). 

3. It's normally only in a third reading of a passage that I'll start thinking about prosody and structure, and diction and all that fun stuff (in other words, many of the analytic techniques Virgil and others have very helpfully suggested how to acheive above). I'm usually guided to what to look for on a technical level both by what intuitively stood out to me, or touched me in some way in my first reading and by questions I formulated on a more logical basis in my second reading focusing on the poem's contents. This would also be the time when I start looking at historical allusions and context (if applicable) more carefully as well. It is only after having gone through all these steps on my own (which obviously sometimes takes more than three readings, sometimes less) that I'll look at other people's criticism and the theories that make up that part of my mind owed to a "warped grad school mentality" as a certain lupine character termed it in the post above  :Wink:  (I'm even wary of looking at footnotes when first reading a poem, apart from glosses for word meanings and the like). 

Perhaps the more interesting question for this thread is why we analyse poetry. I've always thought it was important to keep the reasons in the forefront. I think ideally, for me at least, analysis should not drive our reactions to the poem as much as the reactions to the poem should lead us to analysis. A reaction to a poem usually starts with either a feeling we get from that poem, or puzzlement about what we've just read. I turn to analysis to get a better understanding of how an author is able to produce that feeling, or to better understand a point that seems troublesome or problematic to me. Usually I'll find a close examination of an author's words really deepens my understanding of and appreciation for a poem, but very seldom have I benefited from heavy analysis if I haven't first found something intuitively interesting about the poem, whether it's the subject, or the sound of the verse itself, or some much more vague emotional reaction (even if it's a negative reaction).

One final note. I think Virgil has an excellent point about writing poetry yourself. Part of what drew me to understanding the way poems work in the first place was my own writing (I've always been deeply drawn to, almost compelled to write poetry). I make no claims to having much talent as a poet, but I've found it enriches my understanding of a really good poet's words to have made some experiments of my own.

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## jackyyyy

> since analysing a poem is a lot like getting to know a person.


What a wonderful way to put it !

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## Virgil

Let me add one more thing to my post, which I think is a corollary to my number 2.

Remember that the poem is a work of art. Yes, the poet has to communicate an idea. But the artistry is paramount to the idea. If the poet was only interested in presenting an idea, he would have written an essay, where he would have been absolutly clear. But he didn't. He went through the trouble of shaping and stylizing and finding language that speaks in suggestion. The artistry is always paramount. Whenever I come across someone who is absolutely fixed on communicating intellectualized ideas out of a poem without linking it to the poetry, my mind quickly turns to a Beethoven symphony. There are no intellectulized ideas in a Beethoven symphony. There are musical and aesthetic ideas. No different for poetry.

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## Virgil

> Occasionally the commentary of certain 'poem of the week' critics can make me want to shoot myself or them.


  :FRlol:   :FRlol:  I hope you don't intend to put a bullet into me!  :Eek2:

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## Nightshade

But if you read it aloud surley different accents affect the way a word is said and not only does that prehaps affect the ryhme bu the rythem as well, becasue somtimes stresses on a word are differnty.

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## ktd222

> But if you read it aloud surley different accents affect the way a word is said and not only does that prehaps affect the ryhme bu the rythem as well, becasue somtimes stresses on a word are differnty.


I'm not sure I understand. For example:

_Go in the window_
Is alternating stress/unstress...so tell me how that would change by what you explained in quotation(edit)?

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## Nightshade

its not applicable to that particular one. 
Lets see ok
Tissue
it can be prenounced Ti-SHOE. Tiss-YOU and Ive even heard it prenoncved Tissh-OW, but that would affect the rythem because its all 2 sylabols but things ( cant think of one right now but I know it exsists because Ive come across it before ) That can be prononced eiither with 2 or one sylabol debending on accent or whether it si American or English wll affect the rythem and feel of the poem, wont they?

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## ktd222

> its not applicable to that particular one. 
> Lets see ok
> Tissue
> it can be prenounced Ti-SHOE. Tiss-YOU and Ive even heard it prenoncved Tissh-OW, but that would affect the rythem because its all 2 sylabols but things ( cant think of one right now but I know it exsists because Ive come across it before ) That can be prononced eiither with 2 or one sylabol debending on accent or whether it si American or English wll affect the rythem and feel of the poem, wont they?


I'm not sure, but in this case all three different pronunciations still show the stress on the second syllable of the word-even if you sound each of the three outloud. But yes, the degree of the stress in all three pronunciations seem different here.
EDIT: again, the last syllable is unstressed, not stressed. Sorry about that.

But I think I know what your saying. Take a look at this poem by Walt Whitman:

_When I heard the learn'd  astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars_

Focus on the word learn'd. You could pronounce this word as learn'd or 
learn-ned. Indeed, depending on which pronunciation you use it does have an affect on rhythm. But to this point, it would probably just be up to you to compare the pronunciation to the rest of the poem and see which variation fits.

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## The Unnamable

Sorry if I am wrong but I assume that some might be drawn to this thread because they wish to pick up ideas about what is required of analysis by _examination markers_. Another teacher passed it to me and it isnt without its weaknesses but, having been an examiner, I can vouch for its validity in some respects. Its rather long so feel free to ignore it. It is certainly not meant to be the last word on analysis but some students out there should find it useful if they are studying for examinations. I know that many of mine did. Its about Yeats _Wild Swans At Coole_.

The study written by Ted (names have been changed to protect the innocent) runs as follows:

This poem describes some wild swans. The writer is very impressed by the sound of their wings and their tireless nature. He describes the swans as brilliant and mysterious, beautiful. He claims that they delight mens eyes. But the writer is not entirely at ease. He says that his heart is sore. He looks back into the past and sees that alls changed. He sees that while these swans will never change their nature the landscape will, as man continues to make it over to his own use. He asks, at the end of the poem, what place the swans will find to make their homes when he awakes someday to find they have flown away.

Although the swans themselves are the main figures in the poem, some attention is given to their surroundings. The swans are not actually introduced until the sixth line of the first verse. This has the effect of setting the scene. We are told that it is autumn and that it is twilight. The water in the lake is calm and undisturbed. Yeats brings this across very effectively in the metaphor 'the water mirrors a still sky'. Perhaps this tranquil scene mirrors the poet's state of mind at the beginning of the poem. The water is also described as 'companionable'. By comparing the water to a companion the writer emphasizes the harmony of the birds and the landscape. This metaphor makes the change foreseen by Yeats at the end of the poem all the more unwelcome. When the poet makes his appearance the swans are frightened and begin to fly about in great circles.

All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

The lack of punctuation in these lines suggests a frantic movement. By describing the swans as 'clamorous' the poet emphasizes this. He also compares the noise of their wings to the sound of a bell: he speaks of the 'bell-beat' of their wings. The sound is loud and monotonous. The metaphor could imply that the sound of their wings has a summoning effect.

The swans have a tireless nature. Yeats says that 'their hearts have not grown old'. They 'climb the air' with the greatest ease. They are compared to lovers who perhaps never tire during the early days of their courtship. But the poet also sees them as passive creatures, as being 'Mysterious' and 'beautiful'. He describes them 'drifting in the still water'. The long 'i' in 'drift' and 'still' stresses this passivity.

Numbers seem to figure highly in this poem. Yeats notes that there are 'nine-and-fifty' swans. This is a rather large number and must indicate that the pond or lake on which he sees them must be fairly big. He also tells us that 

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;

This use of numbers is perhaps a sinister hint that the number of years that the swans will be able to stay in their environment at Coole is limited. The language of the poem is simple and therefore blends in well with the simplicity of Nature. Alliteration is used a few times. The repetition of the letter 't' in 'trod with a lighter tread' has a pleasant-sounding effect. The alliteration of the letters 'p' and 'c' in

They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air

conveys a feeling of softness. The repetition of 'w' in 'wander where they will' is very positive, giving weight to the idea of the indefatigable swans.

The poem on the whole is regular in form. It has five verses, each with six lines. The rhyme pattern, with a few variations, is a regular A B C B D D. Generally, the poem is about swans, with some hidden deeper meaning which is a bit confused and obscure. 

Yeats has perhaps tried to keep himself too disciplined in his rhyme-scheme to make this meaning entirely clear. The poem suggests that the poet sees the swans as a symbol for someone close to him, probably a woman whom he loved and who has left him, possibly for someone else. Perhaps the idea of lost love is reinforced by such words as 'Autumn'and'October', which herald winter, the symbol of death. Likewise, night is heralded by twilight. In this case, the death is of the woman's love for the poet. The fact that the poet 'awakes' suggests that he was blind to the gradual dying of this love, and he was awakened by her desertion.

The poet seems, finally, to envy or resent the swans because they are still 'lovers'. They are symbolic because the man's heart, since he first visited them, has grown old, whereas the swans seem eternally young. This kind of immortality the poet longs for.

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## The Unnamable

Well, what is good or bad about this essay? What would an examiner make of it? The basic fault is a lack of structure, and from this weakness most of Ted's individual mistakes derive. His study has no logical progression; there is nothing which pulls his ideas together. His first paragraph is really only a paraphrase of parts of the poem. Then he begins to go through the poem stanza by stanza (and they are stanzas, not 'verses', as he calls them), but almost immediately confuses things by bringing in 'companionable' from stanza four. By the 30th line of his essay he has made a number of comments on the first four stanzas, but doesn't then go on to the fifth. Instead, he makes a few comments on Yeats' use of language. Finally, he devotes two paragraphs to an attempt at interpreting what he calls the poem's 'deeper meaning'. That the essay lacks organization and coherence is perhaps the result of Ted's failure to detect the structure of the poem itself. He hasn't realized that each stanza marks a change in the way the poet sees the swans. He hasn't noticed that the poem begins in a world which is fixed, stable and conventionally beautiful, with the swans numbered and in their places, but ends in uncertainty, with a question which envisages the loss of this stable world, and with the swans no longer familiar but 'mysterious'. He hasn't understood that the meaning of the poem changes and progresses. As a result, he assumes that the swans have the same significance throughout. Accordingly, his essay betrays a confusion of thought by stringing together quotations from different stanzas. That he does this in his first paragraph is particularly unfortunate; an examiner would be unfavourably impressed from the outset.

Underlying all this is a major error in basic strategy. Instead of trying to get at meaning by means of a close examination of the poem's language, Ted has tried to make the language fit his assumptions about that meaning. He has tried to make his evidence fit the case, rather than build his case upon the evidence. This is the usual mistake made by people who adopt the message- hunting approach to poetry. Matters are made worse by the fact that he hasn't really any idea what the 'message' might be. We can see what goes through Ted's mind as he tackles this poem. He reads the first stanza, noticing the regularity of the rhythm and the generally picturesque effect of the language, and assumes that Yeats is embarking on a 'nature poem' of a 'romantic' variety. But as he reads on, he realizes that there is more to it than that; there is obviously some symbolic significance attached to the swans. It is understandable that he finds this meaning obscure, but his preoccupation with puzzling it out distracts him. He doesn't go back and re-assess his original assumptions about the poem being a 'romantic' description of a natural scene. Consequently, when he does comment on language and form, he says things which he feels ought to be true of the kind of poem he thinks it is. Because of this, some of his comments are quite bizarre. He says, for example, that 'the language of the poem is simple and therefore blends in well with the simplicity of Nature.' It is true that the poem's language is simple in that there are few difficult words, but in fact Yeats' use of language is quite complex. And surely 'simple' is the least appropriate word to apply to Nature. He says elsewhere that the alliteration of the letters 'c' and 'p' in

They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air

conveys a feeling of softness. It is difficult to see how a sequence of hard 'c's can convey softness. Or how he can say that 'passivity' is expressed by the 'long 'i' ' in 'drift' and 'still', especially since the 'i' is a short vowel in each case.

To be fair to Ted, he has not yet acquired the skills of examining language critically, nor is he simply insensitive to sound. He makes these mistakes because his understanding is obstructed by a number of sentimental concepts he associates with Nature and 'nature poetry': Innocence, Simplicity, Softness, Beauty, Harmoniousness, and so forth. (He's also a little obsessed with 'Environmental' matters-Man's intervention in Nature, pollution, and so on.)

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## The Unnamable

Ted's 'code-cracking' approach is the reason he makes his silliest comment. Unable to find any other secret meaning in the number 59, he concludes that 'it must indicate that the lake is fairly big'.

Because Ted hasn't attempted to get at his 'hidden meaning' by way of questioning Yeats' use of language, such comments as he does make on the poem's linguistic and formal devices are left feebly dangling. They don't lead to any conclusion, and they don't interconnect. He merely says that certain sound-effects are 'pleasant' or that alliterated 'w's are 'positive' (which they aren't). He makes no systematic attempt to relate these phenomena to his interpretative ideas. His feeling is that they are merely decorative or useful for 'emphasis'; he hasn't grasped the notion that verbal effects are events in a poem's development. He says that 'on the whole' the poem is 'regular in form', but it turns out that all he means by this is that the stanzas are all of the same length and have the same rhyme-scheme 'with a few variations'. He doesn't seem to think that these variations might be significant, nor does he say where and what they are. But form is not simply a matter of lines in rhyming groups. Form is largely a question of rhythm (a word which doesn't appear anywhere in Ted's essay). A stanza is a rhythmic unit, and meaning is as much a matter of the order, pace, sound and rhythm of words as it is of the words themselves. Having said that the stanzas were of equal size, Ted should have asked himself whether they all had the same character, the same feeling. They do not, and one important reason why they do not is that Yeats has varied his rhythms from stanza to stanza (and from line to line). The way the 'feel' of the stanzas changes is the way the meaning changes.

There are, however, two occasions when Ted does connect his comments on some formal aspect of the poem with his interpretation. He points out that the absence of punctuation in lines 4, 5 and 6 of the second stanza 'suggests a frantic movement'. 'Frantic' is perhaps not the best word, but the general idea is correct. Had he realized that punctuation is a rhythmic device he might have been led to examine the effect of the poem's rhythms generally.

The second occasion is when he makes the unfortunate remark that the obscurity of the poem's 'deeper meaning' is perhaps a consequence of Yeats' adherence to the discipline of his rhyme-scheme. This raises the complex business of the relationship between form and meaning, which is something we shall have to return to later. For the time being, suffice it to say that Ted's apparent belief that there is some inherent opposition between form and meaning is completely mistaken. In the first place, Yeats chose to adopt a rhyming form to express his meaning, so we must assume that the rhymes have some purpose and significance, rather than think that he deliberately created a hindrance for himself. So much of the poem's meaning depends upon the effect of the sound of the words; the poem is very musical, and rhyme is an integral part of this music. Consider, for example, how the approximate rhyme of 'stones'/'swans' has a completely appropriate harmony of sound, yet the sound of 'stones' is not so close to that of 'swans' that we anticipate the end of the stanza's last line;the 'build-up' to swans is not weakened, and the word keeps all the importance and emphasis that Yeats wants it to have. Or consider how not only the sound but also the meanings of 'old' and 'cold' echo each other in stanza four.

We've been rather heavy with the hatchet on poor Ted, so before we look at a more successful appreciation, let us say that his essay is not totally dreadful. He can be forgiven his preoccupation with the poem's 'hidden meaning', since it is, after all, a poem whose central image is symbolic, and no study of it can justifiably avoid seeking the significance of that symbol. Ted's interpretation, although it is rather incoherent, is not completely wide of the mark. He wants an over-precise meaning for the swans, and so believes that they are a symbol for a particular woman. (Ted is a sentimentalist at heart). The fourth stanza in particular provides some grounds for this belief. He has detected the poet's awareness of the unkind passage of time and the mood of imminent death; in the very last lines of his essay he shows he has seen that the swans in some way represent immortality, even if he thinks that the poet 'resents' them for it. (Ted was far less manic in his search for the 'secret message' concealed in The Wild Swans at Coole than were some of his fellow-students. One, who clearly had read something about Yeats' involvement in Irish politics, was convinced that the swans were 59 revolutionaries who had abandoned Yeats and 'flown' to Paris.) He has one or two good insights which, had he followed them up, might have led him somewhere. He suggests, for instance, that the tranquil scene in the first stanza reflects the poet's state of mind, but he doesn't go on to relate subsequent changes in this scene to corresponding fluctuations in the poet's feeling and attitude. He says somewhere else that 'bell-beat' hints at a summons, but fails to see that this gives something of a mystical character to the swans.

Ted's writing style is nervous and less than graceful, but its occasional ugly turns are probably a consequence of his as yet small vocabulary of critical terms.

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## The Unnamable

Let us turn now to an essay printed under the pseudonym 'Joyce':

The poem is very beautiful, but I don't mean that in any sentimental sense. The poem is about beauty, I think. (Perhaps that is what the swans represent or symbolize.) Or, more accurately, the poem concerns harmony, the harmony between the swans, the swans and their environment, and the harmony between the swans and the poet.
The tone is melancholic because the poet realizes that this harmony between the swans and himself is lost, or at least transient. To a very great extent, the poem depends for its effect upon the sound of its language. In terms of meaning, the words are quite simple ('Companionable streams' is the only phrase I find difficult), but Yeats has been very skilful in making sound echo sense. This is true of individual words and phrases, such as in line 18 where there is consonance between 'trod' and 'tread', but the vowel sound of 'tread' is 'lighter'. It is also true of the poem as a whole; shifts in mood are conveyed by shifts in rhythm and sound. The violent movement in the second stanza is the clearest example. Generally speaking, Yeats sets up regular rhythms which are then broken at significant points. These variations in sound are all the more important because they are in a sense the narrative of the poem. There is only one actual incident: the sudden uprising of the swans at line 10. The main concern of the poem is the way the meaning of the swans changes for the poet.

The swans are introduced at line 6. The preceding 5 lines serve to set the scene, but do more than just that. The poem starts off in a conventional, confident way, but the third line is difficult to scan. There is a pause after 'twilight' where a stress is expected. Also, I half-expected the line to end with a rhyme on 'beauty'. After this ruffling of the rhythm, the fourth line is very emphatic. The total effect of having the first stress on the first syllable, the alliteration of 'still sky', and the semi-colon, is to stop the reader in his tracks for a moment (as the poet stopped, perhaps, on seeing the swans). This pause is dramatic in that it anticipates the poem's key image. It also seems to 'freeze' that image. The opening stanza as a whole is a picture, like a photograph. The scene is motionless, perfect, seemingly permanent. We come finally to the swans, where the rhythm evens out (Yeats writes 'nine-and-fifty' rather than 'fifty-nine' in order to get this evenness) and it is clear at this point that the swans are to be the poem's subject.

But this changes when the second stanza begins. Several things happen. We realize the poet is actually there, and our attention shifts from the natural scene to him. There is a movement in time, to the past. (The time-changes are confusing throughout the poem, and I'm not sure whether 'saw', in line 9, refers to the present or to the time nineteen years previously.) We get the first suggestion that the poem is concerned with time and with time's passing. The phrase 'has come upon me' has a sad and perhaps resentful ring. Because of this, the imagery of the first stanza takes on new meaning. Until the poet makes his appearance, the autumn woodland and the twilight are to be taken literally, but now we pick up their associations with ageing and fading. The most noticeable change is in the swans themselves. From being static 'props' in the pastoral scene of the first stanza they are transformed into figures of great and anarchic power. The harmony is shattered by a sequence of words suggesting dischord: 'suddenly ... scatter . broken . . . clamorous.'

This vigorous movement by the swans brings with it a deepening in tone. The poet has studied the swans and now his 'heart is sore.' Because the two statements are connected by 'and', it is not necessarily the case that he is grieving because of the swans, but that suggestion is there. 'All's changed', and although what 'All' is, is not made clear, there is a feeling of loss. The loss, it seems, is the poet's youthfulness; nineteen years on from his first visit to Coole, he walks with a heavier tread. But I feel his unhappiness is not caused by age alone. There has been a change in the way he sees the world. (It was twilight nineteen years ago, but it did not seem so significant then.)

The swans, at this point in the poem, begin to take on symbolic qualities. 'Bell-beat' describes the heavy rhythm of the birds' wings, but for me the phrase has connotations of a vaguely religious nature, and bells are a signal or summons. It is as if the swans were leading him then, or even perhaps lifting him in some way.

In the fourth stanza the swans are certainly symbolic. They are 'lovers', and constant lovers too. By contrast with the man they are 'unwearied'. They are at home in both elements, the 'cold/companionable streams' and the air. They are ageless, their 'hearts do not grow old' (nor 'sore'). But it is the last couplet of this stanza which is most important in conveying the symbolic character of the swans.

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

The word 'attend' tells us that the birds do not have to seek passion and conquest, but that passion and conquest are in some way servants of the swans, following them wherever they care to wander. The swans are noble or regal, perhaps even god-like. A number of words in this stanza ('lover', 'companionable', 'hearts', 'passion', 'conquest') hint that the poet is brooding over a lost lover, but his sorrow seems to have more to do with his inability to be like the swans than with disappointed love. Despite the feeling of sadness, there is a return to calm in this stanza. The word 'still' occurs twice. The rhythm is in a 'more or less regular iambic metre and soft consonants dominate. There is only one word which has any hardness ('conquest'). Line 22 is smoothed even more by the long alliteration of

' . . conquest, wander where they will.'

This air of stillness continues into the final stanza. There is a return to 'now'. The poem ends with a question, and the word 'awake' comes as a surprise: the swans are a dream or an illusion.

Exactly what the swans symbolize is difficult to say. Perhaps one would have a better idea of their meaning after reading more of Yeats' poems. In this, the symbolism remains rather vague, and this must be deliberate. It is clear that the swans have greater significance at the end of the poem than at the beginning. It is also clear that they are eternal, outside time. ('Still', in both places in stanza four can mean 'always' or 'forever'.) Therefore they remind the poet that he is not. It may be that he will 'awake' only when he dies. The fact that he comes to Coole every year suggests that his counting is some kind of ritual. The recurrence of references to age and the autumn twilight lead me to think that the swans represent his past (perhaps he is 59 years old) or his youth. 'Passion and conquest' indicate youthfulness. This would explain why they will have flown away when he dies. But the thing is that the poet doesn't complete his ritual counting. Before he had 'well finished', the swans 'suddenly mount/And scatter'. It's as if they refuse to be pinned down and numbered, refuse to be controlled or owned by him. So that whereas at the beginning of the poem the swans are numbered, static figures in a still

landscape, at the end they are drifting, and they are remote, 'mysterious'. In the end, the poet seems to accept this. The last emotion is 'delight'. He overcomes his melancholy by realizing that although he may die, or merely lose his youthfulness, the immortal swans will continue to delight other men who are still young and passionate. Finally, the swans are beautiful because they remain aloof and mysterious.

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## The Unnamable

First of all, we want to say that we do not intend you to take this essay as a 'model answer'. It is by no means perfect. However, Joyce does avoid the traps which caught Ted. Most importantly, she does attempt to reach an understanding of the poem by means of a sensitive look at its language and Yeats' technique. The results of her adoption of this method are threefold:

(i) Her appreciation has a simple but adequate structure-a beginning (two paragraphs of introductory remarks which, although they are of a general and tentative nature, make specific references to the text), a middle (a paragraph, more or less, on each stanza) and an end (twenty-odd lines on the symbolism).

(ii) She has a fair amount of material, and her essay is a better length than Ted's.

(iii) Her interpretation of the poem's meaning-whether it is satisfactory or not-is based squarely on the text. She doesn't formulate a theory and then try to make the poem conform to it.

Of course, Joyce's study has its flaws. For one thing, it is rather uneven. She makes some good analytical comments on the way Yeats uses rhythmical variations in the first stanza, but doesn't go into equal detail elsewhere, even when considerations of metre and rhythm are equally important if not more so. Of the fourth stanza she says only that 'the rhythm is in a more-or-less regular iambic metre' and leaves it at that. judging by the amount of care she takes over the poem's opening lines, she could have been a good deal more precise. She is good at detecting the changes that take place between stanzas, but says little about the continuity of ideas and images across the stanza divisions. She misses the connection between 'bell-beat' and 'clamorous', for instance. She says nothing about rhyme, even though some attention paid to the approximate rhyme in lines 5 and 6 would have helped her to make her point about the 'dramatic' introduction of the swans. But when Joyce does have difficulty over particular phrases or ideas she has the sense to say so; at least an examiner would know that she is aware of the problems, even though she cannot see their solutions.

These things aside, the appreciation is pretty competent. The writing style is fairly free and self-assured; the reader doesn't hear the sound of nail-biting in the background. There is a reasonable balance between technical detail and her more personal conjectures. Best of all, she reasons her way towards a general interpretation. Because she begins with the way the language achieves its effects, she has, by the time she has gone through the five stanzas, ample material with which to build her argument about the symbolism of the swans. As it turns out, her interpretation is quite convincing. She does not insist on an over-precise meaning. She doesn't jump at the red-herring possibility that 59 was Yeats' age, even though she was tempted. (In fact, Yeats was 54 when the poem was published.) Her most valuable insight is that it is not the actual number that matters, but the act of counting. She sees that by counting the swans the poet is trying to 'pin them down', to make them a part of his personal 'ritual', as she calls it. He hopes that by numbering them he can symbolically own them. When they become violently animated (stanza two) they assert their independence of the poet, who is only mortal. His initial reaction is a rather self-centred sorrow, but Joyce puts the emphasis in the right place when she says that at the end the poet comes to terms with the swans' freedom (and therefore with his ageing). She is quite right when she says that the final question is not envious, but actually optimistic. In view of all this, it seems reasonable to conclude that the swans are symbols of youth or vitality.

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## Dark Lady

I'd just like to say a quick 'thank you' to Unnamable. I have actually spent most of the day so far revising poetry for my first year university English Literature exam. I thought I'd have a little read of some of the threads whilst I had lunch and came across this. I think I've heard most of the points you've made before but it's always good to have these things reinforced and I liked the way you contrasted two actual essays instead of just listing the techniques to watch out for.

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## Virgil

I second Dark Lady. That was very good. We are taught in college what makes a good essay but never a bad essay, except for the red marks that come back on our own. Over time we learn, but after how many bad papers? It is helpful to examine poor essays, more specificaly, why they are poor.

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## Petrarch's Love

I found this interesting from the pov of the examiner. I'm just starting to grade papers and, though I'm assuming it's mostly a matter of practice, I'm still geting used to how to phrase my comments and deciding what will be most useful to students, so I used these as a little test exercise to see how I would respond, and then I got some good ideas for the way a more practiced examiner thinks it would be useful to respond. Thanks Unnamable.

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## ktd222

> I'm not sure I understand. For example:
> 
> _Go in the window_
> Is alternating stress/unstress...so tell me how that would change by what you explained in quotation(edit)?


edit: _Go in the window_

s/u/u/s/u

I might have had too many alcohol free beverages.

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## Scheherazade

Re. writing poetry.

I am not sure if that is one of the requisites of poetry appreciation. Surely, having exprerienced oneself, a poet -however amateurish s/he is- might be able to respond more quickly or appropriately to the technicalities of a poem but over all I am not persuaded. We don't need to be cooks to know a good meal or play football ourselves to spot a good footballing skills surely?

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## ktd222

> Re. writing poetry.
> 
> I am not sure if that is one of the requisites of poetry appreciation. Surely, having exprerienced oneself, a poet -however amateurish s/he is- might be able to respond more quickly or appropriately to the technicalities of a poem but over all I am not persuaded. We don't need to be cooks to know a good meal or play football ourselves to spot a good footballing skills surely?


I agree it's not a requisite to appreciate poetry. But I also don't think it's about technacaliteis if the rhythm is there. It must be there for a reason, and in noticing this can lead to a greater appreciation: to why you appreciate the work.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

It certainly helps to appreciate just how _hard_ writing poetry actually is. All of that effortless rhyme that dripped from the pens of Shaky Bill and his mates took months of effort - hard to appreciate that without having a try yourself.

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## ktd222

_The first line of Milton's Paradise Lost presents a different type of problem.


Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit 
Again, this line is predominantly iambic, but a problem occurs with the word Disobedience. If we read strictly by the meter, then we must fuse the last two syllables of the word. However, if we read the word normally, we have a breakage in the line's metrical structure. In this way, the poet forges a tension between meter and rhythm: does the word remain contained by the structure, or do we choose to stretch the word out of the normal foot, thereby disobeying the structure in which it was made? Such tension adds meaning to the poem by using meter and rhythm to dramatize certain conflicts. In this example, Milton forges such a tension to present immediately the essential conflicts that lead to the fall of Adam and Eve._

I found this at a website when I was looking up accent/unccent usages.
Is this technacalities?

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## Petrarch's Love

> Re. writing poetry.
> 
> I am not sure if that is one of the requisites of poetry appreciation. Surely, having exprerienced oneself, a poet -however amateurish s/he is- might be able to respond more quickly or appropriately to the technicalities of a poem but over all I am not persuaded. We don't need to be cooks to know a good meal or play football ourselves to spot a good footballing skills surely?


No, I don't think a person needs to write poetry in order to read it well. It's just something that might enhance someone's appreciation of a poet's work. I think it's the same with most things. I have almost zero talent for practicing the visual arts but I've found that trying a little drawing or painting or pottery just for my own pleasure has helped in my art history studies. Similarly piano lessons have added to my appreciation of music, and practicing cooking myself as well as taking a few cooking lessons while abroad, helped me appreciate food preperation as an art rather than a chore. It isn't necessary to do something to appreciate it, but performing something yourself can enrich that appreciation.

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## Scheherazade

> I agree it's not a requisite to appreciate poetry. But I also don't think it's about technacaliteis if the rhythm is there. It must be there for a reason, and in noticing this can lead to a greater appreciation: to why you appreciate the work.


I think it would also depend on your priorities when reading poetry. For me, 'meaning' of a poem is more important and that is the first thing I pay attention. If I like a poem's message, then I am more likely to remember it later on. However, a good rhyme does not always have the same effect on me.

*PL & XC>*  I agree that writing can make one see how hard it actually is to put the right words together to create the right rhyme/sound while still giving the right message. 

However, does it help with our 'understanding' of poetry?

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## ktd222

> I think it would also depend on your priorities when reading poetry. For me, 'meaning' of a poem is more important and that is the first thing I pay attention. If I like a poem's message, then I am more likely to remember it later on. However, a good rhyme does not always have the same effect on me.


What creates the meaning for you? What enhances that meaning? Why not just read a paper instead?

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## Scheherazade

> What creates the meaning for you? What enhances that meaning? Why not just read a paper instead?


Many things contribute to the 'meaning' of a poem; words chosen, all the poetic devices employed by the poet and these are the things which make a poem different from ordinary writing and enhance its meaning. However, I _personally_ prefer reading a poem with 'something' to say rather than, say, describe a room or a plant - however poetically 'beautiful' it might be.

Oh, I do read papers, too... A lot.

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## ktd222

> Many things contribute to the 'meaning' of a poem; words chosen, all the poetic devices employed by the poet and these are the things which make a poem different from ordinary writing and enhance its meaning. However, I _personally_ prefer reading a poem with 'something' to say rather than, say, describe a room or a plant - however poetically 'beautiful' it might be.
> 
> Oh, I do read papers, too... A lot.


LOL..I agree that many things contribute to a poem's meaning. I assume your talking about so you have something to say?

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## ktd222

> Many things contribute to the 'meaning' of a poem; words chosen, all the poetic devices employed by the poet and these are the things which make a poem different from ordinary writing and enhance its meaning. However, I _personally_ prefer reading a poem with 'something' to say rather than, say, describe a room or a plant - however poetically 'beautiful' it might be.
> 
> Oh, I do read papers, too... A lot.


Can't the poetic devices be enough to creating the meaning in poems?

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## Scheherazade

> Can't the poetic devices be enough to creating the meaning in poems?


I think it would be a monumental task to achieve - to create the meaning merely out of poetic devices - unless you really have something to say. That is why sometimes we read poems which seem 'beautifully' written but we don't feel satisfied because even though the artistic 'beauty' might be there, they don't offer much substantial 'food for thought'. Of course that is not to say that poetic devices contribute a lot in the way of conveying a poet's message or creating the right atmosphere.

But enough with the Q & A game... Why don't _you_ tell us what you think?  :Smile:  

Can you think of any poems which manage to create the meaning only through poetic devices?

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## ktd222

> I think it would be a monumental task to achieve - to create the meaning merely out of poetic devices - unless you really have something to say. That is why sometimes we read poems which seem 'beautifully' written but we don't feel satisfied because even though the artistic 'beauty' might be there, they don't offer much substantial 'food for thought'. Of course that is not to say that poetic devices contribute a lot in the way of conveying a poet's message or creating the right atmosphere.
> 
> But enough with the Q & A game... Why don't _you_ tell us what you think?  
> 
> Can you think of any poems which manage to create the meaning only through poetic devices?


How about _At the Fishhouses_ by Elizabeth Bishop. We analyzed this poem in the old 'Poem of the Week' thread. The meaning is created from the description of the scenes.

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## ktd222

But to tell you....aren't Imagist also able to create meaning.

_The Red Wheelbarrow_ comes into mind.

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## Scheherazade

> How about _At the Fishhouses_ by Elizabeth Bishop. We analyzed this poem in the old 'Poem of the Week' thread. The meaning is created from the description of the scenes.


_To me_, 'At the Fishhouses' is a beautiful descriptive poem; however, I am not sure if Bishop is trying to say anything more than she describes or alludes to anything more.

As for 'The Red Wheelbarrow':

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

How do you think the poetic devices actually construct 'the meaning' here?

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## ktd222

> _To me_, 'At the Fishhouses' is a beautiful descriptive poem; however, I am not sure if Bishop is trying to say anything more than she describes or alludes to anything more.


You can't see the differences in description between man and land made thing? She doesn't need to convey the meaning, but rather the description conveys the meaning for her. I'll go with the second poem though.

As for 'The Red Wheelbarrow':

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

How do you think the poetic devices actually construct 'the meaning' here?[/QUOTE]
I never really got what 'the white chickens' meant, but the poetic device is 
in the image itself of what the words create. How many different things must happen for this scene to be shown as it is: 'glazed with rainwater'.

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## Scheherazade

> I never really got what 'the white chickens' meant, but the poetic device is in the image itself of what the words create. How many different things must happen for this scene to be shown as it is: 'glazed with rainwater'.


Ktd,

I am not sure if I get your point but, before I toddle off to bed, here is what I have in mind (both by ee cummings):

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness


or 

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

(from 'somewhere i have never travelled')

In both poems, the poetic devices are used to convey a meaning. However, I am still wondering if a poem *only* based on such devices could.

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## ktd222

What I mean for the Red Wheelbarrow is that for it to be glazed with rainwater, not drenched, but glazed mulitple events compounding must happen for the scene described to be shown as it is. 

But I do see your point that it's difficult to believe.

edit: good night. don't delete anything.  :Wink:

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## ktd222

I think if I ever had to analyze a poem for an exam(timed or not timed), I would approach my way through the poem by identifying a key element(whatever it is: syntax, image created by words, structure...etc) and work my understanding through the poem around this key element.

Is this the wrong way to approach to understanding poetry or writting an essay on poetry? This is how I approach all poems which I can't extract meaning out of by simply reading through the poem.

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## Virgil

> I think if I ever had to analyze a poem for an exam(timed or not timed), I would approach my way through the poem by identifying a key element(whatever it is: syntax, image created by words, structure...etc) and work my understanding through the poem around this key element.
> 
> Is this the wrong way to approach to understanding poetry or writting an essay on poetry? This is how I approach all poems which I can't extract meaning out of by simply reading through the poem.


It is the right approach for an exam essay, but the key elements you take up you have to link them to the poet's theme. Just pointing out the rhyme scheme if it has no relevance is not enough.

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## ktd222

> It is the right approach for an exam essay, but the key elements you take up you have to link them to the poet's theme. Just pointing out the rhyme scheme if it has no relevance is not enough.


I know, thats what I was getting at when the thread was closed.

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## Virgil

> I know, thats what I was getting at when the thread was closed.


I thought so. Too bad it got closed. I never got to mention what I thought was good about the poem. Oh well.

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## ktd222

You can still tell me what Goethe has to do with the poem through PM.

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## WriterAtTheSea

> It's not at all obvious to a lot of people. Sad but true.
> 
> Analysing a poem without reading it aloud is like analysing a symphony from the manuscript - you miss so much.


You have a VALID point. We should keep in mind that often poetry was written to be performed or read aloud. It is enormously helpful in finding its interpretation.  :Wink:

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## dyingflame

> It's not at all obvious to a lot of people. Sad but true.
> 
> Analysing a poem without reading it aloud is like analysing a symphony from the manuscript - you miss so much.



what about the critical appreciation part of my upcoming a level exam? I will have an unseen poem to crit- and if I read it aloud I get thrown out of my exam room! And no, I don't want to whisper. I think that reading a poem silently gives a slightly different take on it, that's all- a take which is not very technical in terms of rhythm etc but more general and personal.

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## Anthony Furze

Aaaaah the voices in the head...if you ve read alot of poetry, and more importantly heard a lot of poetry, you ll get a voice in the head to read any poem to you.

Note it very carefully-is it the voice of someone you know?

What sort of voice is it?

Then think: why this voice?

It may help with response. Id recommend you practice,dyingflame, before your unseen.

All the best and good luck!

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## Lily Adams

I was taught TP-CASTT.

*T*itle: Ponder the title before reading the poem 

*P*araphrase: Translate the poem into your own words 

*C*onnotation: Contemplate the poem for meaning beyond the literal level 

*A*ttitude: Observe both the speakers and the poets attitude (tone). 

*S*hifts: Note shifts in speakers and attitudes 

*T*itle: Examine the title again, this time on an interpretive level 

*T*heme: Determine what the poet is saying

To analyze tone, my teacher taught me DIDLS!

Carefully observe the passage's

*D*iction
*I*magery
*D*etails
*L*anguage
*S*yntax

That could also be used for short stories, etc. but I love the way it sounds. We did DIDLS in English today, mommy!  :Biggrin:

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## sea moraine

here's some steps you could follow =)

1. find the prose statement, or the literal interpretation of what the poem is trying to convey.

2. paraphrase each stanza into simpler wording (or a more prose-style)

3. determine character, tone, setting, plot - and analyze them (what they're trying to demonstrate)

4. search for technical judgements (ie. schemes, tropes, sound values, sound patterns, diction, rhyme, form, structure)

5. find the biographical information of the author and see how it applies to the poem (or explains a possible reason why the author might have written about a particular theme)

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## Anthony Furze

How about we do an example poem, to show how it works?

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## ktd222

Oh that's too much! You're making reading poetry seem like homework. When I read a poem there is no set list I follow which delves me into the poem. It's whatever peculiarities about the poem strikes me first. I go from there. Not all the of what's mentioned on those lists are needed to understand what's happening in a poem. And like I say if it seems like homework, then my dog ate it.

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## sea moraine

well i guess in high school, analyzing/reading poetry is pretty much homework  :Sick:  which shouldn't be the way poetry is treated at all, but i guess the teachers never really think of it that way do they =3

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## ktd222

> well i guess in high school, analyzing/reading poetry is pretty much homework  which shouldn't be the way poetry is treated at all, but i guess the teachers never really think of it that way do they =3


Well I guess in a school setting the purpose is to teach students to identifying theme, subject, tone, etc. And I guess in that respect - what a better learning source than poetry - because it requires you to read so carefully, if students are able to identify such things in poems, they can pretty much extrapolate that knowledge over to any other written medium, since in poetry each word and word order can carry so much meaning that if one can identify such things in poems, they should have no trouble identifying such things in other written sources. 
It's just when I read a poem with the purpose of checking off things on a list, I get bored halfway and quite. That is not the way to read poetry in my view.

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## chasestalling

don't unless one plans to make a career out of it.

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## kilted exile

Ok, this is related to another discussion in the "dream deferred" thread about needing to know historical/cultural details to understand the full meaning of a poem. To me this would seem to be one of the most important things to know with regards to understanding any work. A couple of examples would be "Out of Avernus" by Crichton Smith & "address from Beelzebub" by Burns.

Due to Smith's work still being under copyright I cant post the poem in its entirity, however I will post some parts of it (from ASLS website around 7/8ths of way down the page)



> And now I bear
> 
> my quivering leaf
> as an angel might
> on the new found earth
> 
> or the gift of a rose.
> So out of the gross
> dark of Avernus
> ...


Now this poem refers to the end of the poets mental illness, although it works on other levels as well. My point is that without knowing that Avernus was a lake that the Romans believed led to Hades and the Underworld the imagery is not as strong.

With regards to Burn's poem, here, I think it is also necessary to understand the way the Scottish social structure was at the time to understand the meaning of this poem.

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## Virgil

> Ok, this is related to another discussion in the "dream deferred" thread about needing to know historical/cultural details to understand the full meaning of a poem. To me this would seem to be one of the most important things to know with regards to understanding any work.


I agree Kilt. Most people find poetry to be baffling, but really what they are usually missing is the full context of the poet. Poetry is a much more personal art, and one can't help not explaining. The explanation would ruin the poem.

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## deflux

Geez, how to analyze poetry? Haha there must be thousands of ways of doing so. Well, what I do is read the poem over and over and annotate my opinions of things i see. I usually go over each stanza one by one and look for any symbols that i may be missing.

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## ktd222

> I agree Kilt. Most people find poetry to be baffling, but really what they are usually missing is the full context of the poet. Poetry is a much more personal art, and one can't help not explaining. The explanation would ruin the poem.


What? Explanations do not ruin a poem, any poem. It is a way see the poet at work.

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## Virgil

> What? Explanations do not ruin a poem, any poem. It is a way see the poet at work.


ktd, I was referring to the poet explaning inside the poem. The absence of giving full details within the poem is why it seems to baffle readers.

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## ktd222

> Ok, this is related to another discussion in the "dream deferred" thread about needing to know historical/cultural details to understand the full meaning of a poem.


Not necessarily. I just analyzed a poem in the "I need help too" thread, and I fully understood the meaning and saw, and felt the art.

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## dramasnot6

I wasnt taught this at school, or really much of anything. But with the amount of analyzing i do for fun and the fact that we were forced to figure out things on our own in school analysis because no one told us anything, i have essentially followed the system below for analyzing any form of literature.

1)Know the cultural context (value and belief systems, ideologies, important events,etc.) of when the poem was written
2)Know the authors personal context and experience within the above
3)Compare the two in terms of the author conforming to or challenging his societal context(looking at how popular the author was,be it good popular or infamous, when they wrote it helps in this comparison) 
4)Look at the style or movement the poem was written in and its conventions
5)Observe the techniques used by the author to conform to this style or movement
6)Observe the different themes and moods achieved by 5) 
7) Combining your knowledge of the context,techniques, and effects of the poem, make an educated assumption as to what you think the author's message/s are. What is the purpose of writing this poem?
8) How does YOUR personal context influence your assumption and reading? How would it differ then that of someone of the authors context?
9) How do all the above tie in with the big picture of life? How do these messages and theme relate to society or the human condition?

Or, in brief:
What is the poem trying to say?
Why do they need to say it?
How do they say it?
What do you think of what they are saying?

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## dyingflame

> Aaaaah the voices in the head...if you ve read alot of poetry, and more importantly heard a lot of poetry, you ll get a voice in the head to read any poem to you.
> 
> Note it very carefully-is it the voice of someone you know?
> 
> What sort of voice is it?
> 
> Then think: why this voice?
> 
> It may help with response. Id recommend you practice,dyingflame, before your unseen.
> ...


 thanks  :Smile:  that's what im doing. .my english a level has 3 papers of 3 essays each hehe it's going to be tough. the pass rates are disheartening too (only 210/804 passed last year) .. this week I wrote a critical analysis/appreciation of ella higginson's sonnet in a valley of peace- could i post it here and here some thoughts on it?

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## dyingflame

well here is my latest crit! how would you rate it and my approach? (I always write crit in this style)

In A Valley of Peace by Ella Higginson

This long green valley sloping to the sun,
With dimpling, silver waters loitering through;
The sky that bends above me, mild and blue;
The wide, still wheat-fields, yellowing one by one,
And all the peaceful sounds when day is done -
I cannot bear their calm monotony!
Great God! I want the thunder of the sea!
I want to feel the wild red lightnings run
Around, about me; hear the bellowing surf,
And breathe the tempest's sibilant, sobbing breath;
To face the elements, defying death,
And fling myself prone on the spray-beat turf,
And hear the strong waves trampling wind and rain,
Like herds of beasts upon a mighty plain.


Popular legends and tales are littered with images of stories and tempests, usually that reflect dramatic disasters, many times implying an irrevocable change to the worse. Mankind's instinct always protected him from such elemental, brutal anger. Can such devastation be regarded as good, even as something to be wished for?
In most cases, it is the other way round: it it the calm and serenity of nature that has always been idealized by literature and artists. What better way, then, to express rage and frustration towards a life that yields no opportunity for change, but to evoke these very storms and wish for them most passionately?
This is the essential rebellious concept behind Ella Higginson's sonnet: the medium by which the very evident emotion of frustration trembles in the development of the images used, which begin as a seemingly ideal description of what may be seen as paradise on earth from a traditional perspective, 
but which are suddenly inverted by use of a volta five verses into the poem: "I cannot bear their calm monotony!" explodes out of the poet's heart- straight to the reader, plunging him in constant upheavals of emotional entrapment. 
After that, it soon becomes apparent that the title and the first quatrain's conveyed description of "a valley of peace" is deeply ironic. The initial diction, while seemingly glorifying life and nature with undeniably beautiful visual evocations of the "dimpling, silver waters loitering through" feel increasingly hollow- even suffocating! "The sky that bends" above the persona, for example, can be easily imagined closing off the poet in her "valley" from the rest of the world. The image itself suggests and deliciously conveys the sense of infinite entrapment: it seems that the even the sky and the valley are conspiring together to trap her in like two cupped hands. The result of this "imprisonment" by slow routine leads to the release of extreme frustration by the poet. 
A rather clever play on words is employed just before the false exposition shifts tone (but not style.) The image of "clam monotony" indicates total utter stillness and stagnation. The choice of "clam" instead of "calm" conveys, through implication, a sense of a much heavier weight than would have otherwise been attained. The idea is that clams, being unable to move and trapped between their shells, are a projection of the poet's feelings about her stalemate. This shackling feeling heightens considerably when one also takes the form of the work in account with its content: the poem, being is a sonnet, must abide by the sonnet's restrictions and rules; a curious choice for a rebellious poem, but which serves an end. The form itself again expresses how much the world bears down heavily, so much, in fact, that even the only outlet for the ever mounting anger, writing, is restricted! This sonnet does, at times, digress from following the rules too strictly, but in barely noticeable ways compared to the restrictions the sonnet imposes. These digressions mainly stretch to the enjambment "red lightnings run/around, above me" and to the fact that it mixes the Shakespeare form of three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet with Italian Sonnet elements like the two main concepts separated by a volta.
Imagination is let loose in the second part of the sonnet: the tone becomes darker, and seems to descend into hysteria, as the poet damns the "still wheat fields" and years for the powerful "thunder of the sea" the "bellowing surf" and the "tempest's sibilant sobbing breath." All these images combine precise linked diction and unmistakably recreate the seaside storm through visual and the aural connotations of the words chosen.
"In a Valley of Peace" also employs a musical quality in its verses. Reading the sonnet aloud, one realizes how easily the words roll of the tongue as the poem progresses and the rhythm increases. This brings out the rushing, rolling tones of the apocalyptic tempest the poem evokes towards its unfulfilled closure: the poem seems to be leading to some final culmination since it seems to gain power and momentum constantly, and yet its finale is "compromised" by the anti-climax of the concluding rhyming couplet, which merely leaves one feeling how much the poet feels the situation is hopeless and unchangeable; preferring to be trampled beneath the hooves of beasts rather to endure the present situation.
Ella Higginson's work displays traces of the wish for rebellion in its content and images conveyed that awake dormant emotions of fervor in the reader. Yet it is also submissive to the sonnet form; acknowledging that "the valley" of our lives can rarely be escaped- only a lucky few manage to do so. Its utter lack of hope, expressed powerfully in its strong diction, is what what makes it an extended metaphor to the daily torments of routine, making it instantly identifiable and easy to relate with its intelligent portrayal of the soul's innermost frustration.

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## dyingflame

what do you say? have i got the makings to become a literary critic someday? or should i just go shoot myself?

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## xAleksx

SPECS & SLIMS = a great, easy method of analysing poetry. I have to use it in English right now and it outlines exactly every part of the poem. Look it up, it's a great help  :Smile:

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## 12pm

This may not be helpful but for me to understand a poem i must first understand the poet. The poets background will sometimes make the unclear slide into focus, as we all need a way to express experiances or feelings which many can express through writting. xx

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