In the article, “How to Read a Poem” by Edward Hirsch, he describes the act of completion when reading poetry, is to step into the imaginative play of the poem. So as I read, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B. Yeats, I took part of this imaginative play was by first reciting the poem at different tempos. To see if there was a rhythm I needed to find so I can find the flow of the poem. I tried different ones, like from how I would read ” Mary had a little lamb”. I kept trying until there was a flow connecting the words that rhymed, which was every other line. I also found myself searching for a theme. I noticed there was a lot of mention of things that create sounds from nature. For example, “Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.” or ” Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade.” As I re-read it, I found myself playing the sounds of nature he described, in my head to create the atmosphere. I, without trying, played along with the visuals given to me in the poem. Trying to bring it to life to see what about it felt peaceful. Every sound they found pleasant were low, fluttering and from nature. It almost felt like a picture puzzle in my head as I tried to envision the meaning. and feeling, through visualizing.
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3 thoughts on “Week 12 – Melissa Cordero”
Melissa, thanks for this very personal and specific description of your “completion” of the Yeats poem. The poem is full of sound imagery, so your experience of reading it aloud seems just right.
The way you described your reading of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is exactly how I read it after getting some pointers from “How To Read A Poem”. Your imagination becomes more graphic when you catch the rhythm of the attitude and technique. Which is what the article elaborates on what consist of reading poetry. Putting yourself in an author shoes while they are expressing an experience through writing allows you to feel some sort of emotion as well. It made the poems read this week more interesting, in my opinion.
Hi Melissa, I really enjoyed reading your discussion post. The poems were so fun to read this week. I too felt the peaceful theme the poet was displaying with the words. I feel like as the readers we didn’t have to work so hard to imagine and picture the scene the poet is trying to take us to because they used so much imagery. But like you said, with the rhythm we find even more flow in the poem.