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Topic: How to read a poem

	Poetry 180 - How to Read a Poem Out Loud
		The readers, by the way, should not read cold; they should be given their poem a few days in advance so they will have time to practice, maybe in the presence of a teacher.
		Reading a poem slowly is the best way to ensure that the poem will be read clearly and understood by its listeners.
		A poem cannot be read too slowly, and a good way for a reader to set an easy pace is to pause for a few seconds between the title and the poem's first line.
	www.loc.gov /poetry/180/p180-howtoread.html (579 words)

	How to Read a Poem (View) Edward Hirsch
		Poems communicate before they are understood, so don't be anxious if you feel as if you don't understand everything right away.
		By the poem's structural logic, the loss of the beloved must necessarily be the greatest loss of all.
		I say that one should turn on a lamp and read a poem in the middle of the night because poetry is a solitary, intimate, and passionately private communication from a soul to another soul.
	www.utne.com /issues/1999_93/view/121-1.html (850 words)

	How to Read a Poem
		The essence of a poem is in its whole, and often poets will be giving you only hints as to their meaning, which will become clearer further along, or when reread, with the ending in mind.
		Usually every unnecessary word has been pared from a poem, and each word remaining is there for two or three good reasons; not finding out what such words mean makes reading the poem as much fun as playing tennis without a ball.
		Each year you're a different person; you'll find that when you return to poems read years before, the good poems will seem to be telling you exactly those things you learned in the interim; they'll seem like different poems.
	spot.pcc.edu /~mmcdowel/poetry/readapoem.html (533 words)

	Handout: Reading a Poem
		Almost all poems are written with reference to normative rules of grammar; there is always a relationship between the apparently messed-up grammar of the poem and the grammar of an ordinary English sentence.
		Oftentimes a poem will not have a plot or narrative line; instead, the movement of the poem may be from one emotion to another or from one idea to another.
		By the time you've read the poem for the sixth or tenth time, you should be coming to some basic conclusions as to what it is about.
	sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu /~egjbp/readpoem.html (1199 words)

	How to Read a Poem - Part 1 - Poetry
		In the poem "Marks" the speaker is using a school metaphor to vent her frustration at being constantly evaluated by her family.
		The poem is too playful to allow for the dire interpretation of family abandonment and suicide.
		In order to hint at abandonment or suicide I would argue that a speaker might use a legal metaphor, claim that she had been judged wrongly, imply that she was committed to prison unjustly; then the speaker might imply family abandonment or suicide.
	www.bellaonline.com /articles/art38724.asp (540 words)

	How to Read a Poem (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		The first poem you read comparing a woman to a rosebud may not mean much to you until you realize that this is a very old tradition involving thousands of poets, almost all of whom are stressing that a young woman should make love before she gets too old and "wilts" like an overblown rose.
		If you don't read my notes to Virgil's Ecologue II, you may embarrass yourself by discussing the poem as if it were about a man addressing a woman because you won't know that "Alexis" was strictly a man's name in the classical era.
		Poems aren't designed primarily to be studied, but to be read and enjoyed.
	www.wsu.edu:8080 /~brians/general_handouts/poem.html (637 words)

	How to read a Poem (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		What essential difference is there between poems spoken by the poet and those by a poet's created character?
		(One good rule of thumb, especially when reading poems written after 1840: assume that the speaker is not the poet until you are sure one way or the other).
		Note how passages or blocks of thought relate to the overall organization, since many times separate thoughts or times or feelings appear in each section.
	www.victorianweb.org /technique/howto.html (351 words)

	Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More - How To Read A Poem
		There are as many ways to read a poem as there are definitions of poetry.
		Reading is active, not passive, and with poetry, this is especially true.
		Read the poem quietly the first time, to yourself.
	www.poets.org /page.php/prmID/280 (479 words)

	Chesil's Favourite Poetry - Thomas Hardy (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		If I read a poem by Shelley, Ode to the West Wind perhaps, I can understand the quality of the poet through understanding and appreciating the poetic devices that he uses: the rhyme scheme, alliteration, I may infer the nature and true subject of the poem through some of these mechanisms.
		What is being read is another’s interpretation of the original and to then analyze these reduces the poem to content alone and, at that, content that may, or may not, be fully reflective of the original.
		A poem is a combination of many things and of these a good few are unlikely to make their way into a translation.
	www.photoaspects.com /chesil/musings/musings7.html (1059 words)

	ReadWriteThink: Lesson Plan: Discovering Poetic Form and Structure Using Concrete Poems
		Explain how the author of the poem "reimagines" Columbus' voyage, and what the results of the new version of the voyage are.
		No matter which poem your students have read for homework, the goal is to focus on inductive teaching to allow students to draw conclusions about the poem.
		Read the journal entries and comment on the self-reflections, noting important observations that students make and asking provoking questions where they need to think more deeply.
	www.readwritethink.org /lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=211 (1784 words)

	How to Read a Poem
		For some who read poetry rarely, it might be a question of whether on first reading the poem makes any sense, on their assumption that poetry is suppose to tell you something.
		But there is a variant to this: How does the poem connect to the author's biography, the times in which he lived (Dickens), or the way she saw the immediate world around her (Dickenson).
		Poems are the fabric on which thoughts can be embroidered infinitely, using the bright colored threads of sonant words strung on the warp of that transcendental mist which we humans have tentatively identified as the world of Imagination.
	community.middlebury.edu /~harris/poem.html (5917 words)

	Reading a Poem: Background for Sonnet 116
		Given all these preliminaries, readers eventually try to capture the idea of the poem in a sentence or two--to state its theme, the meaning they are supposed to carry away as a final impression of the poem.
		Structural clues to a poem's meaning come from the assumption that, to craft a poem well, poets take advantage of places where emphasis occurs to put important words there--and that variations in the structure yield important clues to meaning.
		In the sample poem, the "paradisal dance" suggests all sorts of spirals, from the rotation of the planet itself to the movement of people literally dancing to the actions of lovers to the actions of people in many kinds of cooperative endeavors.
	vccslitonline.cc.va.us /sonnet116/reading.htm (1460 words)

	Books on How to Read Poetry
		Hirsch presents poems that he cares deeply about, and that are "emblematic because they suggest something crucial about the nature of poetry itself." Hirsch writes, "I have listened hard and let the poems inhabit me. This book is a record of my initiations, encounters, responses, experiences.
		About "One Train," his publisher (Knopf) says "it is both a treatise on how to read poetry and an awareness-heightening celebration of the hidden and the unexpected." Koch died on July 6th, 2002.
		Discusses how poetry works (its music and other approaches and techniques), the devices that it uses (rhyme, repetition, etc.), and the shapes, structures, and metrics of poetry.
	www.baymoon.com /~ariadne/how.to.read.books.htm (606 words)

	Reading Log (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		Figures of speech: Name all the figures of speech you can find in the poem: Image, metaphor, simile, catacresis, personification, etc. and explain their significance to the poem as a whole.
		How does sound contribute to the reader’s experience/enjoyment of the poem?
		Function: Choose 3 elements of the poem—an image, a metaphor, a sound pattern, a method of organization, etc.—and explain their function within the poem as a whole.
	www.bilkent.edu.tr /~pounds/howpoem (413 words)

	How to Read a Poem (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		Read it through a second (and third) time, jotting down whatever comes into your mind as you are reading.
		Imagine how this would look, or what sort of visual accompaniment you might want for a reading of this poem.
		Knowing how the poem was constructed will give you some insight into its sense and feeling.
	web.utk.edu /~rliuzza/301/howtoread.html (631 words)

	How to Read an Oral Poem Folklore - Find Articles
		In How to Read an Oral Poem, Foley sets out to make oral poetry accessible to the general reader: "If in championing the cause of the non-specialist this book errs on the side of simplicity and availability," he states, "then so be it" (p.
		The taxonomy concludes with "Written Oral Poems," poetry such as James Macpherson's Ossianic poetry, and Elias Lonnrot's Kalevala, written to be experienced as oral, although read by literate audiences.
		Finally, a section on "Immanent Art" determines how the register and performance context of oral poetry create an expressive idiom that is not simply mechanical or arbitrary, but alludes to a wider traditional frame of reference.
	www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m2386/is_3_115/ai_n8589975 (487 words)

	'How to Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle' by Molly Peacock
		After giving the three systems of a poem as an aid to reading it, she illustrates her method with 13 poems and accompanying essays.
		She goes on to expand on these concepts, concluding confidently: “If the line is a way a child apprehends intuitively, and the sentence is the way an adult apprehends intellectually, then the image functions as a two-way mirror between these states of understanding.
		These poems and essays are a place to start, not a place to end, a fruitful talk about poetry.
	www.post-gazette.com /books/reviews/19991010review352.asp (706 words)

	PoetryFoundation.org: How to Read a Poem
		To read a poem is to depart from the familiar, to leave all expectations behind.
		Poems may be epic, lyric, dramatic, or a mixture of the three.
		The lyric poem began as a work to be performed, to be sung or read aloud.
	www.poetryfoundation.org /features/feature.guidebook.hirsch.html (550 words)

	Practice Close Read; Poetry (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		Reading poetry has become a fearsome thing, when it shouldn't be.
		You read a poem much the same as you would read a section of prose.
		Read the poems from the A.P. Exam and write a short sheet of notes.
	www.barrsenglishclass.com /poetry.htm (2312 words)

	Reading Poetry
		This can make reading poetry--especially that of another time and another culture--difficult; and when something's difficult, the best way to make it unpleasurable is to add the pressure of being evaluated on it in a class.
		So, even if you are not in a private place, or if you feel funny about "performing" a poem by reading it aloud in an aptly dramatic manner, you can at least read it aloud and try to imagine what tones of voice you should use at various lines.
		So, read the poem through once, check to make sure you have a handle on what it's saying, and then read it two more times experimenting with various voices and poses.
	www.english.upenn.edu /~mgamer/Teaching/Handouts/readingpoetry.html (920 words)

	How to Read a Poem
		Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night.
		A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps.
		One notices how naturally he addresses the poem not to the people around him, whom he already knows, but to the "stranger," to the future reader, to you and me, to each of us who would pause with him in the open air.
	partners.nytimes.com /books/first/h/hirsch-poem.html (1006 words)

	The Great Books Reading Partnership - Chapter 9, How to (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		It's wonderful to discover and read a poem when you know nothing about the poet, have never read critical commentary on the work, and have to figure out what the poet is doing with language.
		Coming to a poem without background knowledge can be a plus; it helps you identify with a familiar emotion or experience before grappling with its difference.
		Because “poetry is a meeting between the reader and the poet,” you need to read a chunk of poetry (10-30 pages) from a particular poet before you begin to think about or study the poems.
	www.homeschoolblogger.com /ClassicalMamma/199000 (2353 words)

	How to Read a Poem - TeacherVision.com
		This first reading should be very much the way you would size up someone whom you are meeting for the first time.
		Any additional readings of the poem should be used to think more specifically about the words, phrases, or images you have read.
		Poems usually are written to describe something that the poet sees differently, or is eager to convey uniquely.
	www.teachervision.fen.com /reading/poetry/5395.html (786 words)

	THE POEM AS A MARBLE
		If the poem we are reading is in English-or any other language we understand-each word our eyes encounter as we pass across the page registers some meaning and some sensation to the brain.
		It would be demeaning to our experience of the poem and to the poem itself to try to translate it into prose in order to make it more accessible.
		When Frost's poem says: I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend, you feel yourself swaying on the ladder even if you don't know this effect is partly achieved by the insertion of a so-called pyrrhic foot into a line of iambic pentameter.
	webpages.charter.net /hobblebush/pages/marble.html (2300 words)

	[No title]
		First: Review "How to read a poem out loud" by Billy Collins, poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate.
		Introduce this poem to us by giving us an idea about what it means to you and why you chose it.
		Anonymous poems are also not allowed for the poetry journal, oral reading or essay.
	www.sheboyganfalls.k12.wi.us /cyberenglish9/poetry/read.htm (176 words)

	How to Read a Poem
		A poem has two levels of meaning, the surface level which includes the subject and event or simply what's going on in the poem; the deep meaning (sometimes inaccurately called "hidden meaning" by beginners) which includes the interpretation.
		It's one thing not to realize in the poem "Morning Song" that the speaker is a new mother speaking to her newborn baby, and not realizing that the mother seems to feel two ways about her baby.
		A poem requires a special reading, different from a newspaper article that you read quickly for the facts.
	www.suite101.com /article.cfm/american_poetry/104394/4 (545 words)

	A Work in Progress: How to read a poem? That is the question.
		Sometimes the words of poems seem so laden with meaning, that poems need to be digested and not just read, and you need so much other knowledge to understand what the poet is referring to.
		When I was reading the Mary Shelley biography, there were lots of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron that the authors referred to in the text.
		How much time do you spend on a poem--I think when I do read them (for instance when they are in a novel), I rush through them without appreciating what I am reading.
	danitorres.typepad.com /workinprogress/2006/11/how_to_read_a_p.html (2384 words)

	What is Food for Language?
		It is as if it were both far and near, both absent and present, like the clouds in the sky or the moon in the water, even if one grasps it with the mind, it is impossible to speak it aloud: this is how the jueju should be, especially those in the pentasyllabic form.
		If one tried to explain how deeply affecting it was by simply saying, “Oh, how moving,” it would actually be quite shallow.
		The poem (which begins 月耀如晴雪) is the first item in the collection of Sugawara no Michizane, who records that he wrote it for a class assignment when he was eleven.
	whatisfood.blogspot.com /2006/09/how-to-read-tang-poem.html (713 words)

	Poetry Form - The Concrete Poem
		The poem's visual form reveals its content and is integral to it.
		But imagine that your poem is to be printed as a picture and that you can decide on the ideal shape for the poem.
		The meaning of the poem would remain if the increasing indentation of successive lines were removed.
	www.baymoon.com /~ariadne/form/concrete.htm (647 words)

	frontline: teacher center: teachers guide: much ado about something : post-viewing lesson plans : help with reading ...
		Teachers can help students gain access to the sonnets of Shakespeare using the handout How to Read a Poem.
		Read Sonnet #50, sonnet #71, sonnet #104, or the daring, playful sonnet #20, all available under Some Sonnets by Shakespeare or at http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com.
		Using the handout, How to Read a Poem, ask students to break into groups of four to six to discuss the sonnet they have chosen.
	www.pbs.org /wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/muchado/postviewing2.html (330 words)

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