521 prompt #1, or "want to read poetry? buy a pennywhistle and a faun"

(for 521):

My first “real” experience with poetry was…traumatic, to say the least. It was my sophmore year of college, and so of course by that point in my academic career I had already sat through a pile of high school english classes in which we read, studied, discussed, and interpreted all manner of the poetry one typically reads in high school. We even at one point interpreted the lyrics of the first track off the Oasis record Be Here Now - which, incidentally, is a much less enjoyable album than What’s The Story (Morning Glory)? I also had an Honors English Colloquium my freshman year at Kent State University that involved reading mostly Wallace Stevens. So, I had thought I had a decent background in interpreting extremely inaccessible poetry when I entered my first Creative Writing class. I was wrong, of course, or else I wouldn’t be wasting your time with this anecdote.

The class was led by a local poet of some reknown and so, while we did our fair share of writing brief stories and dialogues and the like, we mostly focused on writing poetry. It wasn’t until I actually sat down and tried to write my first real poem - joke poems written about my high school teachers for the amusement of classmates didn’t count - that it became clear to me that there was an entirely different skeleton under the skin of poetry that I’d previously been taught to poke and prod.

So, my first point isn’t that if you’re looking for a good way to interpret poetry you should necessarily go sit under a tree for twelve hours and write blank verse about how it makes you feel and in so doing you’ll reach some kind of interpretational epiphany. My point is simply that there are two ends to a poem, and while it’s our job to focus largely on the reading end, wrapping your brain around the writing end is probably going to give a much more holistic and therefore effective view of the material you’re looking at. It’s no substitute for close reading, or for knowing every detail ever recorded about, say, Wordsworth’s life, but it’s a supplement.

I’m disinclined to lay out a step-by-step process through which everyone should read poetry and reap the maximum interpretational benefits; even in my compositon classes I am most comfortable with making suggestions as to how my students make necessary writing and thinking moves and then talking through with them the strategies that they themselves find most productive. So, secondly, instead of doing that, I’ll tell you how I read poetry and from there you can decide if there’s anything to take from that that’s helpful to you.

I read poetry in much the same way as I listen to music (I see a lot of parallels both in the composition of each and in how I personally view them both). When I get a new record, I sit down and listen to it passively the first time. Try doing the same thing when reading a poem. Read through it, definitely note (mentally) things of interest, illuminating turns of phrase, etc. but don’t stop to take notes or to wikipedia biographical details on the author. A lot of poetry, again like music, is very much about rhythm…even a good amount of the poetry that purports to eschew rhythm is still subject to it. Chopping up your reading while trying to mine nuggets of meaning is going to close you off from the natural experience of paying attention to rhythm. Though, naturally, if you’re reading something that runs for fifty pages, you’re not going to be able to hack through it all one sitting. Maybe in that case it’s best to pick a stopping point ahead of time and then take some notes at the end before starting the next section later.

In any case, once you’ve finished your read-through, take some notes. Often, following up on my music metaphor, after the first listen I’ll read some reviews of the album online, or read the liner notes and all the lyrics. With a poem, maybe go back and note certain sections that really jumped out at you, certain turns of phrase, certain places where it seems perhaps like the author is playing with rhythm, or form. The point of the first reading is so that you can gauge your intuitive response. This is where my aforementioned “write your own” strategy will likely pay off the most: though there’s a lot to be said for studying biography and history and meter and whatever else when it comes to poetry, often this instinctive first response is going to be informed most thoroughly by your own experience with the form of writing that you’re dealing with. So even if you’ve thrown down a few crappy poems once and nothing else, you’ll be able to empathize a bit more perhaps with the mode of expression you’re trying to interpret.

After the first reading, go back and look in-depth at the sections or lines or phrases that you thought were most engaging. Or that you thought were important-sounding. Often, to me, these things aren’t really the same thing. I’ll read a section of a poem and think “that’s a good way to describe light filtering through a canopy of trees” but ultimately I’m just drawn to that section because of pretty imagery, whereas a section that is seemingly clearly a reference to the poet’s redheaded mistress might not change the way you look at the world visually but it’s probably important in terms of author biography or history. I think each of these types of concerns are just as important to interpretation in their own way.

Gravitate towards the parts that interest you, for one reason or another and once you do some scholarly-research-type work with those sections, ideally the combination of your emotional reaction and empircal evidence will start to yield bits and pieces of a coherent reading. The important thing to realize is that poetry isn’t often immediately accessible in terms of an overall meaning, and may, at times, even intentionally attempt to foil such searches for clarity. Sort of climbing a cliff, you need to find your handholds, and lock onto them, and then go from there.

It’s important to remember, though, that how the poem makes you feel, how and where it strikes you, is just as important as any historical or consequential knowledge you can bring to it.