How to Read (and Even Enjoy) Poetry

poems aren't riddles so today let's quit trying to figure them out and just focus on reading them [Music] i have a distinct memory of sitting in a high school classroom one day the room was dim as it usually was illuminated only by the overhead projector that cast shadows of my teacher's handwriting on the front wall on that particular day we all had big heavy textbooks on our desks and we were looking at that scant scattering of words that william carlos williams had assembled and then entitled the red wheelbarrow so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens our task was to read that poem and tell our teacher what it meant and i had no idea where to start none of us did to this day i can remember reading the poem i can remember what it was like in class but i can't remember what the answer was i still don't know what that poem means but in the years since that day in high school i've come to love this poem actually it's one of my favorites and i think that's because i've learned how to read poetry and i mean actually read it instead of just trying to figure it out so today i want to share some of what i've learned about reading poetry with you and i want to do it for a couple of reasons first people get scared of reading poetry i think because they've had bad experiences with it in school and second i also think that those bad experiences reading poetry have put people off of writing poetry which is a real shame because writing poetry is a blast so with that in mind let's talk about what makes poetry different from other kinds of writing so we can begin to understand it and maybe even enjoy it [Music] poetry may be difficult at first because it is pretty different from a lot of the writing that we run into more commonly but if we can understand what the basic goals of poetry are we'll have a better time reading it and i think one of the easiest places to start is by understanding what poetry isn't first a poem is not a riddle riddles are puzzles and they hide their meaning behind puns metaphors or other devices and while poets may use similar devices in their own work they do it to make their poetry clearer not harder to understand so a riddle may need to be solved but a poem doesn't a poem is also not a story short stories and novels rely on plots on sequences of events and the ways that characters respond to those events and change from beginning to end but poets aren't really worried about world building or character arcs stories have plots but poems don't really need them and a poem is not an essay essays are all about turning over ideas and dramatizing thought processes on the page they reflect consider reconsider and expound poets are often reflective but while essayists do a lot of their thinking out loud poets tend to leave it in earlier drafts so essays are maybe cerebral in a way that poems usually aren't and of course we're painting with the broadest of strokes but that can be helpful early on so if a poem isn't a riddle story or essay what is it what do poems do if they don't confound narrate or expound well i think poems primarily do two main things first they capture experiences and reflect on individual moments a good poem will invite you into the poet's shoes to relive and experience for just a moment and second they play with language in a way that other types of writing typically don't a good poem is a lie to the sounds rhythms and shapes of language and it uses all of those resources to evoke meaningful experiences at its most basic i like to think of poetry kind of like a photograph imagine for example that you spend the whole day one summer with a group of friends you explore the city visit an amusement park try new foods and then finish the day by taking a picture together in the yellow glow of a street lamp and of course one of you is blinking right when the picture gets taken now when you go back and look at this picture a few months later are you going to stare at it and try to figure it out if you showed it to someone who wasn't there that day would you say hey check out this picture of me and my friends now tell me what it means or i'll think you're not very smart of course not when you look at a picture that you took with your friends there's nothing to figure out there's no deep hidden meaning and there's no correct answer there's only a memory of an experience captured in a particular moment and that's what poetry does but while photographs are primarily visual the language of poetry can capture any aspect of an experience and share it with a reader a poem is a snapshot an experience served up in a single moment so don't give yourself heartburn trying to uncover some deep hidden meaning instead just experience it and take it all in [Music] so let's go back to that infamous red wheelbarrow when i was in high school trying to figure out what the poem meant i was frustrated angry and totally dumbfounded now though i love it and that's not because of what the poem means but it's because of the experience that it lets me have that is when i read that so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens i imagine myself sitting on the porch of a well-worn farmhouse it's a misty gray day the kind where the grass seems extra green and the rain doesn't so much fall as stick to things glaze them if you will the chickens are pecking and clucking about in the mud and i'm just taking it all in the wheelbarrow is useful and important but it's not doing anything right now and neither am i it's a quiet moment a moment of rest a moment of contemplation and it lasts for as long as i read and consider the poem williams doesn't try to explain the moment and he doesn't try to connect it to some grander narrative he just presents it and lets us sit with the quiet drizzle and the busy chickens while we watch the wheelbarrow glisten in the clouds softened light if all you get out of a poem like this one is a few seconds of peaceful escape on a farmhouse porch then i think you're getting all you need a poem like this one isn't meant to be some tough nut that you have to crack and break apart in order to figure out it's just an expression of beauty that someone noticed in an otherwise mundane setting and at least to me that's why poetry is so exciting [Music] okay so hopefully you can see why reading poetry is a whole lot more fun than solving it now let's finish up by talking about how to approach a poem that is if our job is just to take it all in and experience what the poem has to offer what does that process look like well here's another poem by william carlos williams dawn ecstatic bird songs pound the hollow vastness of the sky with metallic clinkings beating color up into it at a far edge beating it beating it with rising triumphant ardor stirring it into warmth quickening in it a spreading change bursting wildly against it as dividing the horizon a heavy sun lifts himself is lifted bit by bit above the edge of things runs free at last out into the open lumbering glorified in full release upward songs cease first things first pay attention to the title poets don't spend much time explaining things so titles are usually the best place to find contextual information that will help you to understand the experience that the poet wants to share with you here we're clearly meant to experience something that happens at dawn well great so what do we have at dawn don't worry about what any of it means just focus on appreciating what's there if this were a photograph what would you be seeing well bird songs lots of them and william describes them hammering away at the dark sky as they hammer away we see color start to appear in the sky gradually getting warmer and warmer as the songs get more and more energetic finally william says that the sun lifts itself but then he corrects himself and says that the sun is lifted into the sky free and glorious and then the songs stop of course we want to pay attention to the language that he uses too we get great energetic lines like beating it beating it with rising triumphant ardor and bursting wildly against it as dividing the horizon a heavy sun lifts himself and lumbering glorified in full release upward savor the way the words sound the way they feel to say give yourself permission to get carried away in the flow now williams could have just written a single line that said wouldn't it be crazy if the bird's songs were actually what caused the sun to rise and then he could have been done with it some people might even wonder why he didn't just say that if that's what he meant to say why include all that extra stuff well as you and i both know now a poem is not meant to communicate a message it's meant to communicate an experience so williams doesn't want to tell you what he thought that morning he wants to tell you what he experienced that morning and gets you to experience it too he wants you to hear the birds to see the sunrise to contemplate the possibility that birdsong is what lifts the sun up every morning and none of that would happen if he just wrote out a quick sentence telling you what he thought in that case you would get the message but you would completely miss the experience and the experience my friends is what poetry is all about [Music] it's really too bad that we usually have our first experiences with poetry and literature classes because that's not what poetry was written for poetry is meant to capture moments and share experiences not to be puzzled over with grades on the line but because we do often encounter poetry first in an english class i think it's important to remember that creative reading is just as much a thing as creative writing literature professors and english teachers are often creative readers and they're trained in producing interpretations and critiques of poems that may or may not have anything to do with the poet's original intent plus they also tend to be pretty good at making what they do sound very important and oh so serious at its heart poetry is meant to be understood and appreciated by everyone much in the same way that you don't need any special training to understand and appreciate a photograph of you and your friends there is no secret meaning behind that photograph and there is no single correct interpretation of it it's just a picture that lets you relive an experience and poetry works in exactly the same way so i hope that all of this has helped you to see how approachable and enjoyable poetry can be when you decide to read and experience it instead of solve it like some kind of puzzle i also hope that if you've ever wanted to write poetry you can see that you don't need to create cryptic mysteries just capture your experiences and then do your best to help your readers experience them too of course and as always there's so much more that we could say about poetry and i'm sure we will for now though i think this is a good place to start so let me know what you think ask questions if you have them and then go give poetry a chance maybe even by checking out the poems that i've linked to in the description and i think i might just do the same so until next time take care [Music] you

Channel: Writing with Andrew

Views: 446,055

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Id: FjwJQ0NVyYc

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2022