This week: Reading Poetry Edited by: Lilith of House Martell  
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"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history."
~ Plato
"You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what’s in your heart."
~ Carol Ann Duffy
"Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful."
~ Rita Dove
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language."
~ W. H. Auden |
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Have you ever read a poem and, despite a valiant effort, you just didn’t ‘get it’? Perhaps you found yourself buried under clauses and metaphors, lost without the light of meaning; almost as though the poem didn’t want you to understand or connect with it.
Learning how to read and understand poetry is like learning how to speak a new language sometimes. But don’t fret! You just need a few tools and a bit of practice. This week I’ll share a few tips that will (hopefully) get you reading, understanding, and even enjoying poetry.
1. Select a poem.
Any poem. It could be one you’d like to review or maybe from a book on your shelf. Maybe even a poem that has left you perplexed for a while.
2. What type of poem is it?
Poetry written in specific poetry forms will give you clues. For example, a sonnet is typically about love, while haiku is generally about nature, and a limerick is often funny. Get the idea?
3. Look for any unfamiliar words.
Scan through the poem and look for any words you may not know the meaning of. Take a few moments to look up those words. By doing this in advance, you won't be tripped up by these new words while you read the poem. Remember: meanings of words sometimes vary based on context. If the definition you read doesn’t make sense in the context of the poem, you might need to look at alternate meanings.
4. Punctuation
Look the poem over again, but this time look at the punctuation used. Find all the periods first. This will show you where the sentences stop. The number one thing that trips readers up when they first encounter Shakespeare isn’t necessarily the language. Shakespeare was fond of really looooong sentences! While many of his sonnets are the traditional length of 14 lines, they typically have one or two sentences. 
Knowing where the sentences stop and start will help you figure out the poem’s units of meaning. A lot of poetry uses the sentence or the line as its unit of meaning (in other words, that’s the size of bite you need to take to understand each part of the poem), but Shakespeare and his contemporaries often use the clause as their unit of meaning. Seeing a poem made of a few long sentences should tell you to slow down while reading. Taking smaller bites of those poems will make them easier to understand.
5. Read the poem.
Sometimes reading aloud to yourself can help you understand it. Think the poem means as a whole. If you’re feeling ambitious, or if you’re dealing with a longer poem, ponder what you think each individual stanza means.
6. Google
If you're reading a poem by someone other than a WdC writer, Google the poem and look for sites that offer explanations of the meaning of the poem. once you find a site, compare your interpretation of the poem to how the site interpreters understood it.
If your understanding of the poem was the same, KUDOS to you! If it wasn't, take a closer look at some of the phrases and see where your interpretations align. But hey, here's a little secret, sometimes there’s more than one correct interpretation for a poem.
If you still can't seem to get a grasp of the poem's meaning, talk with a friend or fellow writer about it. Sometimes seeing it through someone else's eyes may help give a new perspective.
Ok! Now that you have some strategies to make reading poetry a tad easier, it’s time to flex your muscles. Give these steps a try and let me know in the comments below if they helped.
Do you have some tips to share that may help others understand poetry, then share those in the comments too! |
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Comments received from my last poetry newsletter, "Understanding Poetry Forms" :
Joseph  wrote:
FORBIDDEN LOVE
You and Me Never can it be
Even so I will set for you to shine
I will chase you’ll run
Eons’ more our love will endure
Carved in stone its known for sure
You and Me Never can it be
Glimpses’ of your glorious glow
Your beauty continues to grow
I chase yet you run
Wisdom from all the ages agree
Still Glances of you I yearn to see
You and Me Never can it be
The reason for my world to be
Longing the next eclipse may be the one
I chase still you run
Fathom the chase not trying to win
To catch surely would mean the end
You and Me Never can it be
I’ll always chase you see
Monty  wrote:
"ODE TO THE POET" was picked up and published. Have enjoyed reading most all types of poetry and have written most of my life. |
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Poetry: September 13, 2023 Issue [#12172]
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