{"id":280,"date":"2003-01-15T21:04:50","date_gmt":"2003-01-16T01:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=280"},"modified":"2007-10-07T12:12:19","modified_gmt":"2007-10-07T16:12:19","slug":"how-to-read-a-poem-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=280","title":{"rendered":"How to Read a Poem: I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part II: External Evidence<\/a>
\nPart III: Scansion<\/a>
\nPart IV: Public and Private Reading<\/a>
\nPart V: Tenor and Vehicle<\/a>
\nPart VI: Practice<\/a><\/p>\n

“Poetry should be at least as well-written as prose.”<\/i> –Ezra Pound<\/p>\n

It should also be at least as well read. Poems are in words, words have denotations, and strings of words have, or ought to have, a logical meaning. The reader’s first obligation is to figure out what that meaning is. This is as true in poetry as in prose. The critic Cleanth Brooks devoted a famous book, The Well-Wrought Urn<\/span>, to debunking what he called “the heresy of paraphrase,” by which he meant that the meaning of a poem is not identical with its paraphrase. Of course this is true — there would be no reason to write the poem if it weren’t; but I think even Brooks would concede that if we can’t approximate the poem in prose then we aren’t likely to get very far. Consider this poem from Thomas Hardy:\n<\/p>\n

My spirit will not haunt the mound
\n Above my breast
\nBut travel, memory-possessed,
\nTo where my tremulous being found
\n Life largest, best.\n<\/p>\n

My phantom-footed shape will go,
\n When nightfall grays,
\nHither and thither along the ways
\nI and another used to know
\n In backward days.\n<\/p>\n

And there you’ll find me, if a jot
\n You still should care
\nFor me, and for my curious air;
\nIf otherwise, then I shall not,
\n For you, be there.<\/p>\n

Forget about the rhyme and the meter for the moment. Just lay it out in prose and ask yourself, what is Hardy talking about? The narrator refers to “his spirit” his “tremulous being,” and his “phantom-footed shape.” The narrator is imagining himself posthumously, as a ghost; once you realize this the other details fall into place. The “mound above my breast” is the dirt on his grave; he will come out “when nightfall grays” because that is when ghosts appear. <\/p>\n

A prose paraphrase would go something like this: I will live, after I die, in the places that I loved and in the memories of the people whom I loved and who loved me. Only they, the living, can bring me, the dead, to life again. <\/p>\n

Perhaps this seems obvious. Yet two highly intelligent and literate people to whom I have shown this poem have been utterly unable to make it out, and I know they would have easily deciphered a prose passage of equal difficulty. <\/p>\n

Tomorrow I will talk about some of the things that are left out of the paraphrase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part II: External Evidence Part III: Scansion Part IV: Public and Private Reading Part V: Tenor and Vehicle Part VI: Practice “Poetry should be at least as well-written as prose.” –Ezra Pound It should also be at least as well read. Poems are in words, words have denotations, and strings of words have, or ought […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-2-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}