Reading Poems

1. Reading Poems Chapter One Poetry: An Introduction

2. Reading Poems • Poetry is similar to fiction and drama because we pay close attention to action, language, make connections and draw conclusions. • We also compare poetry to our own lives in a much similar way as we do with fiction and drama. • Poetry is also different from fiction and drama in may ways because we must pay more attention to connotations of words, sound, rhythm, syntax, and punctuation.

3. Reading Poems • We need to pay more attention to these linguistic details because poetry is compact (small) but carries much meaning. • We must learn to read poetry well in order to take advantage of all it has to offer. • We can do this by asking ourselves several questions when reading poems.

4. Reading Poems • What feelings does this poem evoke? What sensations, associations, and memories does it give rise to? • What ideas does the poem express, either directly or indirectly? What sense does it make? What do we understand it to say and suggest? • What view of the world does the poet present? Does it agree with your view? What do you think of the poet’s view? What value does the poem hold for you as a work of art and as an influence on your way of understanding yourself and others?

5. Reading Poetry • When answering these questions we are reading and reflecting upon poetry in three ways, through: experiencing, interpreting, and evaluating.

6. Those Winter Sundays ROBERT HAYDEN Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?

7. The Experience of Poetry • Speaker: an adult remembering the past and what his father used to do for him. • We sense that he regrets how unappreciative of his father he was as a child. • We may also think of our own memories of our fathers during the first reading of the poem. • If not, we can at least recall waking up on a cold day in a warm house. • Personal responses such as these are very important when reading poetry because they will lead us eventually to the poem’s meaning.

8. The Experience of Poetry • It may often be helpful to write out a response to a poem after reading it. • Brief notes can help us describe memories and feelings that the poems evoke in us. • These notes will assist us in our reflection of the poem’s meaning and values.

9. The Experience of Poetry • See reader’s sample response of Those Winter Sundays on page 3. • Try writing your own response to Those Winter Sundays.

10. The Interpretation of Poetry • The interpretation of poetry refers to how we explain a poem to ourselves in order to understand it. • One way of reading a poem is by relating it to our own experiences in life (experiencing poetry). • Another is to consider the poem’s meaning (interpreting poetry). • Experiencing a poem relies more on emotional responses while interpreting a poem deals more with intellectual comprehension and rational understanding of the poem.

11. The Interpretation of Poetry • Interpretation includes: observing, connecting, inferring, and concluding. • Observe details of description and action. • Look for connections among these details. • Based on the connections we make guesses about their significance. • We will come to a conclusion about the poem’s meaning based on our observations, connections, and inferences.

12. The Interpretation of Poetry • Let’s discuss Those Winter Sundays and the interpretive process. • During a second reading of the poem we may begin to notice even more than our first initial emotional reactions to the poem. • The first words “Sundays too” will indicate that the father performed the chore of warming the house every day, including Sunday. • We may also notice the poem contrasts warm and cold. The house is cold and then is warmed up by the fire.

13. The Interpretation of Poetry • The poem shifts from father to son. The first stanza describes the father’s acts (he) and then shifts in the second stanza the boy’s awakening (I) and then the third describes another type of awakening--the speaker’s realization of his indifference to his father’s actions. • The last stanza also has the strongest contrast between the past and present; between the love that the speaker neither notice or acknowledged as a child but now does so as an adult.

14. The Interpretation of Poetry • We have so far focused on the poem’s speaker and subject. • Speaker refers to the voice of the character we hear in a poem. • Subject indicates what the poem is about. • The first time we read a poem, we usually focus on who is speaking and about what. • Thus, when we read in Those Winter Sundays “the chronic angers of that house” we know this must point to something important in the poem.

15. The Interpretation of Poetry • We wonder if the speaker in the poem feared the father’s anger. • We notice that the plural form of the word (angers) is used instead of the singular (anger); the speaker may be suggesting that there was some problems between not only the speaker and the father but between the father and more than one member of the family. • If there is a fear, by the end of the poem we realize that the fear was only there because of the speaker’s own indifference to the father’s love.

16. The Interpretation of Poetry • The lines that convey the most feeling in the poem are the last two lines: What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices? • We know the speaker regrets the past. • Because of the repetition of the phrase “what did I know” we can feel the intensity of the emotion. • The use of the word “austere” suggests both rigor and self-discipline. This may refer to how the father was strict in his love. • The use of the word “lonely” emphasizes that the father performed this task without the help of the other family members. It could also suggest emotional isolation from the speaker.

17. The Interpretation of Poetry • The word “offices” implies both duties and the authority the father possesses. It can also suggest something done for another. It can also refer to the daily prayers recited by priests. • When we take the words “offices” and “austere” together we know the speaker is trying to convey an understanding of the sacrifices the father made. • There is also a contrast in the concrete language at the beginning of the poem and the abstract language at the end. This may be a way to show that the speaker has an inability to express affection directly.

18. The Interpretation of Poetry • We must slow down when reading poetry. • We must focus deliberately on the details of language, form and sound. • By slowing down to read and re-read, we allow ourselves to make these connections.

19. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ROBERT FROST Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

20. The Interpretation of Poetry • Speaker: concerned momentarily about who owns the words. The speaker is reassured that the owner cannot see him. • We may wonder why the speaker should care about this enough to mention it. • Does he feel that he is doing something wrong? • After reading the poem, we do not know. We know there is a man in the woods and there is snow. • We begin to ask ourselves: Why does he stop? What attracts him?

21. The Interpretation of Poetry • In the first stanza the speaker talks of the woods from his own point of view. • In the second stanza the speaker talks of the woods from the point of view his horse. • We are told that the horse “must” think it’s queer to stop here. Of course we know that it’s not the horse’s thoughts but that of the speaker.

22. The Interpretation of Poetry • The third stanza continues with what was going on in the second stanza--the horse’s concern about stopping for a reason other than food or rest. • There is now a bit of tension that breaks with the sound of the horse’s bells. • The first line in the last stanza seems to ask the question of why the speaker has stopped. The speaker was attracted by the dark beauty of the woods. Still he feels pressure to move on.

23. The Interpretation of Poetry • The last stanza is serious and solemn. • The pace of the poem is slowed by punctuation and repetition of the third line. • Repetition also centers our attention on the line so as to carry a deeper meaning: reading “sleep” as the final sleep of death.

24. The Interpretation of Poetry • After we decide that “sleep” can mean death, it’s easier for us to also interpret “miles to go” as the amount of time the speaker has left to live. The “promises” can then be interpreted as responsibilities yet to fulfill in life. • The stopping by in the woods can be viewed as a small escape from these responsibilities. • The main part of the poem seems to be the conflict in the speaker’s mind: stopping to contemplate the beauty of nature and moving on to return to the responsibilities of life.

25. The Interpretation of Poetry • For this poem we interpreted it line by line but in normal reading and interpretation things do not go in a linear fashion but more circular. • Things at the beginning of a poem may be enlightened by what appears at the end and vice versa. This calls for repeated reading of a poem. • Our initial interpretation of a poem can also grow and change over time--by repeated exposure to the poem. Or when discussing it with a teacher and classmates.

26. The Interpretation of Poetry • Some interpretations of a poem will seem more “valid” or “convincing” if the interpretation relies on more of the poem’s details. • All interpretations are encouraged because of the intellectual stimulation they offer to readers. • Varying interpretations arise because of what matters most to us as readers. We will consider what we feel is most vital and work this into our reading of a poem.

27. The Evaluation of Poetry • Evaluation of Poetry: Assess its literary quality and make a judgment about how good it is and how successfully it realizes its poetic intentions. • Look at the language and structure. • Consider how much significance the poem has for us personally. • Consider how much significance the poem has for others. • Consider how much significance it had for the poet. • We determine how much the poem “speaks” to us personally. We can relate to some poems on a more personal level than others. • We try to consider from what perspective the poem was written. • We will consider the poet’s life, attitude, beliefs. • We will also consider the poem’s publication history and how it has been received by other readers in the present and past.

28. The Evaluation of Poetry • Literary evaluation can be a complex process. • The poets that have written the poems felt they were valuable enough to share as did the publishers and editors of the text. • Others, including teachers, may feel the same but maybe everyone does so for different reasons. • Because everyone decides he or she enjoys a poem for different reasons, it’s hard to make any final judgment about a poem. • As we change as humans, the poems we encounter will mean something different to us. • A poem that is meaningless today may be significant in the future and vice versa.

29. The Evaluation of Poetry • So our evaluation of poetry depends not only on that we understand it but on how it relates to our individual lives. • There are a few considerations we should keep in mind when making evaluations of poetry. • An evaluation is essentially a judgment, a set of opinions bout a literary work based on a thoughtful consideration of it. • We may agree or disagree with a sentiment in a poem. (Ex. We may or may not cherish our memories of our fathers as Hayden’s speaker seems to or we may or may not appreciate responsibility as much as Front’s speaker seems to).

30. The Evaluation of Poetry • How our life is made up and what our cultural and moral expectations are will have some importance on how we evaluate poetry. • Religious and political beliefs will also have some influence as well. • Our aesthetic values, how we judge if a poem is beautiful or ugly, will also be of importance. • Sometimes our initial response to a poem is linked to our evaluation of a poem while at other times we evaluate a poem totally differently.

31. The Evaluation of Poetry • Out of all the ways in which we can evaluate poetry, those of aesthetic value are the most difficult to discuss. • The reason is that it’s difficult to pinpoint what is a “good” or “bad” poem. Everyone’s opinion is different. • We do, however, need to be able to state more than whether we like or dislike a poem. • In order to be able to answer such questions as is Frost’s “Stopping by Woods” or Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” a beautiful poem? We will need to k now more about the elements of poetry.

32. The Evaluation of Poetry • It is hard to escape from judging a poem from initial exposure but by reading more poetry and comparing it to others and being able to point out specific elements of these poems, we can make better judgments of poetry in general. • In doing so we can have more faith in our judgments of poems because we will have something meaningful to say about the poetry’s elements than just merely say you like or dislike a poem and not being specific about what you like or dislike.

33. The Evaluation of Poetry • What you judge today as the good elements of a poem may not be the same tomorrow. • Because of this understanding of literary change we should always be open to new evaluations of poetry in the same way we are open to more than one interpretation of a poem. • Let’s test our ideas about experience, interpretation, and evaluation of poetry by reading a poem by Adrienne Rich titled “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.” • Focus on the questions: What do each of the characters stand for? How would you describe the relationship between the uncle and his wife, Jennifer? Between the men and the tigers? Between Aunt Jennifer and the speaker? And between Aunt Jennifer and the tigers?

34. Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers ADRIENNE RICH Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand. When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. The tigers in the panel that she made Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

35. The Evaluation of Poetry • Now let’s work together as a class to answer the questions noted earlier along with those in the text on pages 11-12.

36. The Act of Reading Poetry • Now as a class we will take note of what exactly active reading entails. • We should record observations and raise questions during active reading. • We may notice details in language and think about the poem’s implications. • As we explore possibilities to our own questions (no matter how right or wrong those answers are) we are also exploring the poem’s meaning.

37. The Act of Reading Poetry • The sample annotations for “My Papa’s Waltz” on pages 12-13 deal with the poem’s situation and subject although another set could be constructed on its technical aspects.

38. My Papa’s Waltz THEODORE ROETHKE The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

39. The Act of Reading Poetry • The “waltzing” is not a literal one in this poem, it’s a more of a romp through the house with a stop in the kitchen where it ends in the bedroom and the boy is put to bed. • The mother watches all and feels disappointment, possible anger. • The “dance” is rough because the father has been drinking. • The boy clings to his father but we are not sure if it’s out of fear or enjoyment of the romping through the house. • We assume it’s a regular ritual at bedtime instead of a one-time occurrence. • The tone of the poem is nostalgic but not sentimental. • The boy (now a man) remembers the father with an affectionate term “papa.” • The high-spirited bouncing rhythm of the poem seems to contrast with the ideas that the father’s drinking or the boy’s fear is the central concern of the poem.