In the Article “How to Read a Poem” by Edward Hirsch, he explains all the ways how to correctly complete a poem. He writes how to “put yourself” into the poem, the reader has to put in the effort to truly understand what the “poet has begun”. Hirsch also explains how it takes time and effort to truly do this, but after a lot of time in doing this, understanding poems is easy. In the poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B Yeats, the poet, is fantasizing about a lake island where it is very peaceful, and it seems he wants to go there. It states “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings”. He utilizes imagery in this poem, showing how his image of this place is running wild and how he is eager to go there. According to this text, I think something might be going on with the poet’s life at this time: “While I stand on this roadway, or the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core”. It shows that he isn’t in this place, by saying “while I stand on this roadway”. It is in his heart where he wants to go, whether this may be going to heaven where he may be at peace, or he actually might want to go on a vacation somewhere nice. In the article that Edward Hirsch wrote, I used one of his ways to read a poem, which is by reading the poem aloud. It sort of helped me understand it a bit more. In the article, Hirsch said that everyone sees a different meaning in any poem. That was in the back of my head while reading […]
Daily Archives: November 11, 2022
Throughout my years of reading literature and specifically poetry has been a struggle to understand fully. In the article “How to Read a Poem” written by William Carlos Williams, He tells us about how difficult poetry often is to read and that to fully understand a poem we have to “complete” what the poet began. He tells us “This act of completion begins when you enter the imaginative play of a poem, bringing to it your experience and point of view.” The poem that I have chosen to “complete” this week is “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. On the surface, it seems like a really simple and to-the-point poem with it being so short but it tells a deeper story. I completed this poem by putting myself into the shoes of one of the seven boys in the poem. The lines “We Left school. We Lurk late.” and “We Die soon.” stuck out to me the most because it does not say explicitly in the poem that they were kids rebelling against what they should do and that it could come with serious consequences such as death. But when I put myself into the position they were in it seems much clearer that Brooks was trying to portray this message.
In “How to read a poem” it says that you need to complete what the poet has started and one way to help was to read aloud. The poem I chose was “The mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks and at first I read it silently. What I got was a poem about a mother who had to abort a baby and is haunted with regret for her actions but in the end loved her children. On my second read I read it out loud and I got a different experience as I noticed how some words at the end of the lines had rhymed and how the commas had helped set a slightly different tone. I still felt a tone of regret but throughout the poem I felt the mothers love for her children all throughout. In the lines,” If I stole your births and names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,” When read silently I had the tone of a mother who knew that she stole the future of her children and was regretful with what she did. After reading it out loud I had seen a mother who knew what she did and was instead sad and apologetic to them that they never had the chance to live their own life.
In my opinion, poems speak to us in many ways. Though their forms may not always be direct or narrative. Sometimes the job of the poem is to come closer to saying what cannot be said in other forms of writing, to suggest an experience, idea, or feeling that you can know but not entirely express in any direct or literal way. Williams admits that poetry is often difficult. the poem “January Morning,”: All this— was for you, old woman. I wanted to write a poem that you would understand. For what good is it to me if you can’t understand it? But you got to try hard— He also suggests that a poet depends on the effort of a reader, somehow, a reader must “complete” what the poet has begun. This act of completion begins when you enter the imaginative play of a poem, bringing to it your experience and point of view. If a poem is “play” in the sense of a game or a sport, then you enjoy that it makes you work a little, that it makes you sweat a bit. Reading poetry is a challenge, but like so many other things, it takes practice, and your skills and insight improve as you progress.
Until this assignment I would usually struggle with poetry. Most of the times I would struggle with interpretation or meaning that the author tries to portray. These sources of information about the structure of poems and it’s components I found extremely helpful and gave me a better understanding of how to approach poems. My personal favorite takeaway from the article on “how to read a poem” is to read it aloud and embrace the ambiguity. I find both of these suggestions very helpful. Reading a poem aloud does make you get a better feel of the flow and rhythm while knowing that the meaning of a poem is a subject to a personal interpretation and it keeps on renewing itself every time you reread it is very freeing. Poems certainly have a mystery aspect to them and knowing that there is no right or wrong way of interpretation is quite liberating.Discussin
In the article “How to Read a Poem” written by William Carlos Williams, he acknowledges the challenges of reading poetry. The readers must “complete” what the poet has begun. This week the poem that I am choosing to speak about is “White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey. This poem is about all the “white lies” the speaker told during her childhood, as the poem progresses the story becomes less innocent. The speaker uses spondee in the third line of the poem “light-bright, near-white” which first introduces us to the racial theme of the poem. The speaker goes on to talk about her “white lies” as she is identified as white by one of her classmates “‘…the time a white girl said (squeezing my hand), Now we have three of us in this class. But I paid for it every time Mama found out.” The speaker was happy to be seen as white but in doing that she was denying her black mother. Her “white lies” symbolize the innocence of the lies she told but also symbolize the thing she is literally lying about which is that she is not 100% white. I did some research on the poet and she was half black and half white and this gives a little insight to the identity issues she faced growing up being mixed. I feel that the poet did a great job at displaying those emotions in the poem.
The poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” describes Innisfree as a peaceful and tranquil place the poet wants to go to. It’s a very quiet place and that is the main reason the poet wants to go there. “Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade” the poet is explaining the landscape and knows for sure he will be at peace living there. In the second stanza “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings” describes the peace and positivity that would come as if the dawn is coming out of the veil. When the morning comes, it carries calmness into the place where the crickets were singing which is why the poet wants to be there. The poet wants to be around nature and doesn’t want to hear unnecessary noises. I completed what the poet set in motion after reading “How to Read a Poem” is how it can sound very lonely and miserable way the poet wants to live but I see it as being at peace with himself. The poet pointing out nature and the environment shows he doesn’t want to hear unnecessary noises but wants to hear nature, something that gives him peace.
William Carlos Williams states that in order to understand a poem, a reader must “complete what a poet has begun”. The article from Poets.org states that in order to do so you must use your imagination to connect it to your experience to see it from your point of view. For this discussion I’ve selected “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. After reading the poem a few times I really examined it and broke it down. Gwendolyn Brooks states that the poem was inspired when she passed a pool hall one day and noticed some teenagers inside cutting school. Using “imaginative play” I interpreted the poem as a summary of the life trajectory of the 7 teenagers (as established in the subtitle). The first stanza “we real cool, we left school” establishes the rebelliousness of the group foregoing their education, viewing this act of defiance as cool. Stanza 2 the author uses the word lurk. To lurk means: “To lie in wait in a place of concealment especially for an evil purpose.” Which is followed by the line ‘We strike straight.” To strike is to hit with force. I interpreted this stanza as a representation of the dark path the kids are travelling down, staying out late being menacing. This Stanza is followed by “We sing sin, We thin gin.” I don’t interpret this as singing of sin but enjoying sinful acts or showing unruly behavior like drinking alcohol (the act of thinning gin). The 4th stanza brings the poem to an end “We jazz june, We die soon”. Gwendolyn Brooks states that “June” represents the establishment (Authority). “Jazz” was once considered rebellious music. So I interpret the line representing the teens rebelling against authority. The outcome of their behavior culminates into their early demise or the behavior ending sooner […]
In “How to Read a Poem” it is said that the act of “completion” begins when you enter the imaginative play of a poem, bringing it to your experience and point of view. The poem i chose is “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. This poem is about a group of kids forming a identity that they themselves accept and not what society accepts. What completed the poem for me was the line “We jazz June. We Die Soon.” It made me understand the reason for their Defiance, rebellion, the reason they wanted to form a identity true to themselves even if it meant going against societal rules was because they were going to die soon and they rather die with a identity they accept rather than one society accepts.
I chose The Lake Isle Of Innisfree this Poem is very sad yet beautiful because it highlights certain factors about what the author is going through and what he thinks of himself for example he states “ Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade.“ In this line he is higlighting loneliness that he feels but at the same time he thinks that this life will be peaceful where he says And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;“ here the author is saying that even though it can be lonely here that he is content with it because he can have some form of peace that he never had before and by the end of the poem he comes to grip with the reality of the situation and accepts it by saying “I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” This is the author realizing that he has to accept what is happening, after reading the article how to read a poem it helped me to complete it because in it it states that everyone can see a different meaning in the poem so while others may find this poem depressing I find it beautiful that he’s able to get past the loneliness and to be at peace with the life he is living now.
For this week’s discussion, I chose “The lake isle of Innisfree” by W.B. Yeats. It’s a beautiful haunting record of what I believe is W.B. Yeats himself reciting the poem adds another mystical layer to the poem and in a way brings the poem more to life. You can close your eyes and listen to W.B Yates himself describe ” I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore” and “And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade.” You can imagine the imagery and scenery for this poem more vividly with W.B. Yeats himself describing it. The poet has set in motion the imagery of this scene of the lake isle of Innisfree and the yearning and longing of the scenery. You can picture everything described in the poem and with the way of W.B Yeats himself reciting the poem it brings the very imagery of the Lake Isle of Innisfree to life.
In “How To Read A Poem” one of the biggest instructions that helped me read and understand poems clearly are “Talking Back to a Poem” talking back to a poem is something I noticed I did unconsciously, I would faintly question what the author or poet is trying to say and represent. After reading this article, I made sure to be intentional with my questions so that I can understand the poem in its entirety, after asking myself “what does this line mean?” “what is this poet trying to say?” it makes me further read the poem deeply over and over. The poem “My Last Duchess” at first was a very hard poem to understand at first, I had to ask myself over and over what each paragraph was trying to convey, and I had no choice but to understand fully so that I could answer the questions through each paragraph on Commonlit. This poem is about The Duke feeling betrayed and belittled by his first wife, The Duchess. He described her as “trifling” simply because she was pleasant to most that she had laid her eyes upon, and The Duke’s ego was not going for that so he killed The Duchess. Later on in this poem he reveals that he wants to marry a Count’s daughter.
In the article How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch in order to “complete” what the poem has started, you must put yourself in the poem. You have to immerse yourself into the poem, and put yourself into the point of view of the narrative. The article brings up the fact that it is something that takes time and effort to get used to. But over time it should make understanding poems easier. The poem I chose was The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B Yeats. This narrator is fantasizing about going to a remote island off the coast of Ireland. In this poem, the narrator wishes to live a simple life on a remote island. The narrator says that the nature on the island will bring peace and comfort. “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 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” (5-8, Hirsch). The narrator speaks about nature on the island like it has a spiritual meaning and as if it is a part of him.
Poetry is a written art form expressed with literature. Poetry at times can be tricky, and hard to understand. At times you may not understand, but how Carlos Williams said poetry comes with challenges. He also stated that you must complete what the poet has began. By Carlos saying that phrase you must complete what the poet began means that the reader has to put hard effort and be open minded when they are reading the poem. You must put your imagination into the poem, and approach the poem in a different way. Also by finding the meaning of the poem by understanding what the poet is trying to express in the poem. For example the poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a short poem with lines that really difficult to understand. In order to understand it you must complete the poem, and put an effort when reading the poem. The poem talks about a group of young men trying to be cool living life at young age by cutting class, being in the streets late at night, by doing that they will might end up dead at a young age. At the end it all depends on the reader to find and complete the poem with the effort of understanding the message of the poet.
