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READING POETRY From first glance to throwing it under the microscope STRUCTURE: The First Glance 1.
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Poems are in either stanzaic or continuous form. “Pan with Us” is stanzaic: broken up thoughts told in stages. “Mending Wall” is told in one continuous form—not in one stanza! We use “lines” and “stanzas” to discuss poetry like we use “sentences” and “paragraphs” to talk about prose. In print form, poetry is a visual experience as well as an auditory one. As in advertising and graphic design, the use of white space at stanza breaks creates a short visual and cognitive pause. This creates either tension, a sense of order and control, or a sense of sequential steps, depending on the poem’s ideas. Remember that poets use these spaces on the page to add meaning. Frost’s regular (though not exclusive) use of blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter—shows his fondness for working within the confines of a formal structure, as opposed to free verse, which does not follow conventional forms, line lengths, or metrical patterns. Free verse is the form favored by Wislawa Szymborska. Frost’s sentiments are captured in his remark, “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” CONTENT (IDEAS): A closer look—at WHAT is said 1.
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Often our clearest understanding of the subsequent poem is in the title, so pay attention to this instructional guide. Poems use characters to convey meaning. The speaker in a poem is called the persona. Do not say, “The poet creates a persona/personae (plural) that…” Instead, just refer to the persona(e) of the poem. And, do not make the naïve mistake that “Frost is the speaker.” No, it is the persona who speaks! • What is the persona like? How do you know? • Are there characters or multiple voices in the poem? What are they like? Consider the dramatic situation of the poem. What actions occur in the poem? Who is talking to whom about what? (Not, “The poet is talking to the reader.”) • Does the poem convey a story? What is that series of events? • What is the logic—the line of reasoning—of the poem? How does it progress from one point or idea to the next? (Hint: Look for pivot points: expressions such as but, however, moreover, so, then, thus, etc. that transition from one point or idea to the next.) • What changes in thought, tone, mood, or point of view occur in the poem? Where? From what to what? • Is there a sense of resolution by the poem’s close? How would you characterize it? Poems are not neutral. They create value judgments through metaphors and other figurative language but work through statement (idea) and counter-­‐statements. What idea is established? How is the idea negated, undercut, even ridiculed? This creates poetic tension. Poetry seeks the essence of truth and beauty of some human event: an interaction involving a person, an animal, an emotion, a place, an idea. Essence is what makes something unique, what is at the heart of an experience—and a poem. •
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What is the poem about? What ideas or universal themes does it raise? What universal human questions are raised? Are any solutions implied? What patterns of images or ideas (motifs) are woven throughout the poem? Poems usually present an unfolding line of reasoning. In his essay “The Figure a Poem Makes,” Frost observed that a poem “assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life—not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouément. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood—and indeed from the very mood.” When analyzing a poem’s meaning, consider tracing how this line of reasoning begins, develops, and resolves. FORM (TECHNIQUES): A microscopic look—at HOW it is said 1. In poetry, the line is the basic unit of meaning. There is a natural pause at the end of every line, whether the lines use enjambment or an end-­‐stop. •
Enjambment, from the French “to straddle,” is when the idea begun in one line is continued or finished in following lines (usually in the following line) without punctuation. The Effect? It generally makes the poem feel more spontaneous, informal, natural, and less obviously rhythmic than do end-­‐
stopped lines. •
An end-­‐stopped line emphasizes and lengthens the pause by using punctuation. Different punctuations can create a longer, more emphatic pause: commas create a short pause; an em dash, semicolon, colon, period, question mark, & exclamation point create a longer pause. Thus, end-­‐stopped lines are the opposite of enjambment. •
A caesura is a pause or stop within the line of verse, generally indicated by punctuation. This caesura can be o
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initial (toward the beginning) medial (in the middle), or terminal (toward the end). Line 31 in “The Death of the Hired Man” has all three types of caesurae—and an end stop. “Sh! Not so loud: he’ll hear you,” Mary said. Note, too, that in lines 15 and 16 of this poem Frost creates a medial caesura in line 15 then in line 16 creates an initial caesura without any punctuation at all. A natural reading requires a slight pause after “age.” “What good is he? Who else will harbor him At his age for the little he can do?” 2. Frost believed that poetry should capture the sound of sense. Please refer to a separate handout on Tone and the Sound of Sense. Recall that when Frost talks about tone, he is referring to the tone of voice, the way the persona or characters say the lines. Frost uses specific connotations of words, carefully constructed syntax, meter (and variations of meter), and rhythm to insure the lines can only be read one way to convey the precise tone he intends. 3. Mood is the effect of this tone upon the reader. So, it’s important to consider denotation/connotation and the emotional charge of words: house vs. home. Additional Techniques to Consider •
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Imagery. Note the imagery can be auditory, olfactory, etc. as well as visual. Tropes: figures of speech with an unexpected twist in the meaning of words, such a comparison (metaphor or simile), metonymy, synecdoche, personification, meiosis, or irony Onomatopoeia Alliteration, assonance, and consonance Syntax (short vs. long, simple subject-­‐verb-­‐object, complex constructions, mid-­‐sentence asides, aposiopesis, multiple independent clauses joined by semi-­‐colons to create unusually long and complex patterns, sentence fragments, anastrophe, anaphora, epistrophe) Meter (and variations of meter), feminine endings (an extra unstressed syllable at the end of a line of verse) elision, (omission of one or more sounds—such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable—in a word or phrase) Hyperbole And so on…