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Kathleen's Reviews > How Does a Poem Mean?
How Does a Poem Mean?
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“A more useful way of asking the question is How does a poem mean? Why does it build itself into a form out of images, ideas, rhythms? How do these elements become the meaning? How are they inseparable from the meaning?”
Well now I feel like I’ve been to school. They do not make textbooks like this anymore. I am tempted to seek out the other books in this collection “An Introduction to Literature: In Four Parts,” but they will be hard if not impossible to find. I spent over five months with this book and it was indeed an education. Ciardi defines, describes, illustrates and illuminates.
I was inspired by
"When We Two Parted" by Lord Byron (https://poets.org/poem/when-we-two-pa...),
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...),
"The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...),
and so many others.
I studied the difference between a trochee (two syllable section, accented followed by unaccented) and an anapest (three syllable section, two unaccented followed by accented); felt the difference between consonant rhymes and vowel rhymes; and learned to distinguish blank verse (regular meter but unrhymed) from free verse (irregular meter too).
I considered the many things that go into word choice and phrasing, from overtones and undertones to Lewis Carroll’s critique of Victorian morality. And this:
“The musicality of good phrasing is obvious at a glance. ‘Saint George and the Dragon for Merrie England’ is not simply a statement; it is a rhythmic unit to which a man on a horse can swing his sword arm.”
My favorite sections were the last two, about “motion” and “countermotion.” I didn’t realize there was a “rest” in poetry, like in music, called a “caesura.” It was fascinating to see how a poet can play lines and phrases off one another within a poem and use these techniques to accomplish a specific effect.
This was a wonderful guide to live with for a long time, and I think I’ll miss it.
“A true poem is endless in being not a meaning but an act of existence.”
Well now I feel like I’ve been to school. They do not make textbooks like this anymore. I am tempted to seek out the other books in this collection “An Introduction to Literature: In Four Parts,” but they will be hard if not impossible to find. I spent over five months with this book and it was indeed an education. Ciardi defines, describes, illustrates and illuminates.
I was inspired by
"When We Two Parted" by Lord Byron (https://poets.org/poem/when-we-two-pa...),
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...),
"The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...),
and so many others.
I studied the difference between a trochee (two syllable section, accented followed by unaccented) and an anapest (three syllable section, two unaccented followed by accented); felt the difference between consonant rhymes and vowel rhymes; and learned to distinguish blank verse (regular meter but unrhymed) from free verse (irregular meter too).
I considered the many things that go into word choice and phrasing, from overtones and undertones to Lewis Carroll’s critique of Victorian morality. And this:
“The musicality of good phrasing is obvious at a glance. ‘Saint George and the Dragon for Merrie England’ is not simply a statement; it is a rhythmic unit to which a man on a horse can swing his sword arm.”
My favorite sections were the last two, about “motion” and “countermotion.” I didn’t realize there was a “rest” in poetry, like in music, called a “caesura.” It was fascinating to see how a poet can play lines and phrases off one another within a poem and use these techniques to accomplish a specific effect.
This was a wonderful guide to live with for a long time, and I think I’ll miss it.
“A true poem is endless in being not a meaning but an act of existence.”
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Reading Progress
April 12, 2016
– Shelved
April 12, 2016
– Shelved as:
to-read
March 25, 2021
–
Started Reading
April 24, 2021
–
18.38%
"Correcting some of my literary ignorance--reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" for the first time. Wonderful!
“Hold off! Unhand me, gray-beard loon!”
“The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.”
"He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”"
page
75
“Hold off! Unhand me, gray-beard loon!”
“The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.”
"He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”"
June 11, 2021
–
44.85%
""Every poem makes some demand upon the reader's sympathies. In addressing his subject, the poet takes an attitude toward it and adopts a tone he believes to be appropriate....there can be no poem without some sort of sympathetic contract between poet and reader...The badness of bad poetry can always and only be located in the quality of the sympathetic contract. A bad poem is ,,, a failure of aesthetic character.""
page
183
July 12, 2021
–
50.74%
"After an excerpt from Whitman's Song of Myself, discussion of images in poetry. "There is...some principle of selection at work...certain kinds of images that occurred readily to Whitman's mind and were welcomed into his poems..." and other pushed away or never occurred to him.
"...a simple tabulation of the kind of image that appears in a man's poetry is one index to his mind.""
page
207
"...a simple tabulation of the kind of image that appears in a man's poetry is one index to his mind.""
July 26, 2021
–
50.74%
"Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
Love this! Read it all here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet..."
page
207
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
Love this! Read it all here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet..."
July 26, 2021
–
60.29%
"Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
Love this! Read it all here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet..."
page
246
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
Love this! Read it all here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet..."
August 18, 2021
–
70.83%
"From Crass Times Redeemed by Dignity of Souls, by Peter Viereck:
The tenderness of dignity of souls
Sweetens our cheated gusto and consoles.
It shades love's lidless eyes like parasols
And tames the earthquake licking at our soles.
Retunes the tensions of the flesh we wear.
Forgives the dissonance our triumphs blare.
And maps the burrows of heart's buried lair
Where furtive furry Wishes hide like moles."
page
289
The tenderness of dignity of souls
Sweetens our cheated gusto and consoles.
It shades love's lidless eyes like parasols
And tames the earthquake licking at our soles.
Retunes the tensions of the flesh we wear.
Forgives the dissonance our triumphs blare.
And maps the burrows of heart's buried lair
Where furtive furry Wishes hide like moles."
September 4, 2021
–
83.33%
""In every good poem there is some final echo of nuance and feeling that lies beyond explanation and analysis.""
page
340
September 5, 2021
– Shelved as:
poetry
September 5, 2021
– Shelved as:
nf
September 5, 2021
– Shelved as:
writing
September 5, 2021
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-7 of 7 (7 new)
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message 1:
by
Ken
(new)
Jul 18, 2021 03:29AM
I like that second bit especially. There's a truth to that. Images R Us.
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Ken wrote: "I like that second bit especially. There's a truth to that. Images R Us."Glad to hear, Ken!
Excellent, Kathleen.
Angela M wrote: "Excellent, Kathleen."Thank you, Angela.
Terrific review of what sounds like a wonderful resource,Kathleen. I remember learning to scan poetry in school, and we were taught something about the techniques, but nowhere nearly as comprehensively as this. Poetry is like music to me, in that you know something's wrong with the bad stuff, even if you can't pinpoint or explain why. And the good stuff is just - well - good!
PattyMacDotComma wrote: "Terrific review of what sounds like a wonderful resource,Kathleen. I remember learning to scan poetry in school, and we were taught something about the techniques, but nowhere nearly as comprehensi..."Thank you Patty, and you make such a great comparison between poetry and music. I feel like that too, and can't explain why some is good and some is bad to me. I think any teaching about both of these needs to tread carefully, so we don't lose that instinctual reaction to it.
Kathleen wrote: "PattyMacDotComma wrote: "Terrific review of what sounds like a wonderful resource,Kathleen. I remember learning to scan poetry in school, and we were taught something about the techniques, but nowh..."😊
