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Reading Poems: Practical Considerations Most poems are syntactic grammatical units, in which line breaks do and do not count. They do not count because the basis of meaning is thesyntaic and grammatical unit. Find it.
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Reading Poems: Practical Considerations Most poems are syntactic grammatical units, in which line breaks do and do not count. They do not count because the basis of meaning is thesyntaic and grammatical unit. Find it. They do count because rhyme and meter can create emphases that highlight certain words and combinations of words.
The syntactic and grammatical sense (meaning) of the poem is only the base on which the poem is erected. But it is the base. Everything else – rhyme, rhythm, image, allusion, figures of speech etc. – contributes to the total meaning effect of the poem.
“Poetic devices” are not decoration. They are functional units that argue , or support the poem’s “argument” in different ways. In the good poem, anyway. So, to read well you will need to come armed. Two excellent resources: • A good dictionary http://libguides.uhcl.edu/databases • A reliable guide to mythology http://www.pantheon.org/mythica.html
As my sister-in-law says, A POEM IS LIKE A PERSON. We need to “meet,” experience, and think about it many times before we can really know it. A POEM IS A SPEECH. A speaker in a situation (sometimes including a specific setting and audience) is expressing perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, directly as well as indirectly. We infer theme and tone partly from what the speaker says and how he says it. A POEM IS AN ARTFUL WEAVE OF WORDS. Every single element and characteristic of style -- syntax (loose, periodic, parallel, cumulative, etc.), diction (formal & colloquial; denotations & connotations; abstract & concrete); imagery, figurative language, symbolism (if any); repetition and devices of sound,sometimespunctuation and other mechanics of writing ...suits speaker, situation, theme, and tone, and contributes to their development. A POEM IS A MUSICAL WORK OF ART. Form, rhyme , rhythm or meter line breaks (end-stopped or run-on) stanza length and stanza breaks; traditional forms ...complements everything else in the poem: speaker, situation, theme, tone, style.
