10 Tips for Reading Poetry

10 tips for reading poetry (okay, 11)

"Speaking for myself, the questions which interest me most when reading a poem are two.  The first is technical: 'Here is a verbal contraption.  How does it work?' The second is, in the broadest sense, moral: 'What kind of guy inhabits this poem?  What is his notion of the good life or the good place? His notion of the Evil One?  What does he conceal from the reader?  What does he conceal even from himself.'  W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1968; 50-1).

Work through these tips in order:

1. Don’t jump to immediate conclusions about what the poem means.  First guesses are usually wrong. Withhold final assessment until you've finished all 11 steps.

2. Pay attention to the title of the poem (if there is one).  What clues does it hold about content?

3. Read the poem aloud. Listen for patterns of sound or sense that your eye might miss.

4. Look up words that you don't know or that might have multiple or alternate meanings. Use the OED.

5. Imagine the literal scene (what is literally going on here? What’s the situation?)

6. Look at the characters or figures represented.  How many characters are represented? Who is speaking? Who is being addressed? Are these characters in opposition or do they resemble each other?

7. Look for repetition on many levels, including:

• Words
• Ideas (same idea expressed in different words)
• Sounds (similar sounds that point to connections between words through rhyme or alliteration)
• Shapes (are there different stanzas? Are they all the same size?)
• Phrasing, grammatical structure
• Does the poem allude to any other works of literature or kinds of literature--the Bible, mythology, fairy tales, elevated discourse?

8. Look for significant contrasts on many levels, including between:

• Words (antonyms)
• Ideas
• Sounds (clashing sounds)
• Speakers
• Register (the kind of speech used: formal, colloquial, slang, etc.)
• Sentence length, sentence type (declarative, interrogative, imperative, subjunctive)

9. Pay attention to time and space, both as represented in the poem and as enacted by the poem.

• Are there different times (tenses) in the poem?
• Are there different places represented in the poem?
• Are there different stanzas ("stopping places") in the poem, even if not marked visually with a break?
• Are there hinges in the poem--places where the poem seems to break into different parts?  Perhaps the first and second halves contrast.  Perhaps the stanzas or quatrains do different kinds of work.

10. Look for language that draws attention to itself by any means (look, sound, imagery). This includes figurative language (metaphor, metonomy, synecdoche). Often something important happens at these moments.

11. Does the poem end differently than it began or the same?  What has changed, or why has it not changed?

One note about representing poetic lines when writing about poetry: it's customary to use a forward slash (/) to indicate line breaks in poetry, or where the line ends, even if the syntax of the sentence continues in the next line (enjambment).