“Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique.” To do anything in life is part attitude and technique if you really think about. Not only is it the attitude of the person who conveys or reads in this case, but it is the attitude that the poem itself creates. This can be best described as the tone or emotion a poem instills in its audience. Just with most literary works, understanding something like a poem takes time technique. To be able to find out the true meaning of that small line that seems to be coated with details but yet so small in its bigger picture. To relate your experiences to the poem, in order to dig deeper. Many literary techniques can be utilized to break down a poem to understand it clearly. 2) After reading Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare, the quote above and those two aspects of it were truer than ever. Throughout reading the poem at first, it was confusing to understand what Shakespeare was comparing the person in the poem towards. However, after using literary techniques, I was able to break it down line by line to understand. For example, it states, “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed”. This quote at first baffled me but after reading the line before and after it, I got a clue of what the poem was saying about summer in comparison to the person in the poem. Regarding attitude, I had to slow things down and match the poem’s energy to understand clearly.
Daily Archives: April 16, 2023
“Good poetry reading is part attitude and part technique”. I want to start by saying that during our course, I carried over a few thoughts for myself. The first, concerning the goals and objectives of art and literature in particular. I have always believed that literature should have a purpose. Now it seems to me that literature owes nothing to anyone. However, if a universal thesis arises, we can say that its goal is our emotional and mental response. All literary devices and art forms appear for this purpose. Therefore, I understand the word “attitude” as a reaction to what has been read and the following interaction. Thus, a kind of dialogue between the reader and literature takes place. However, in order to start this dialogue, we must have a number of knowledge and skills, or techniques. This is especially true of the genre of poetry, the genre of the most capacious and more complex “interlocutor” than prose. Form, rhyme, literary devices, they all build our experience and perception of poetry. Sometimes, you need to understand the background of it. Just recently, for example, I read a poem that tells about a letter that came to the mother of a soldier during World War II. The lines of the verse were composed in such a way that they appeared with a triangle. These forms of letters were sent to mothers, wives and children of soldiers from the front. People were in trepidation and horror opening such letters with the hope that their husband, son or father is still alive. The use of such a form prevails over the feelings and sensations that people experience. However, if you are not aware of this fact, it will be just a poem in the shape of a triangle. 2. After reading sonnet 18 […]
“Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique.“ In order to understand a poem, the reader has to get into it and read it as they feel it, paying attention to the language and tone of the poem, which would be the attitude. As well as having a technique to help understand such as looking up confusing words, connecting related ideas, listening to its sound and rhythm and paying attention to repeated words and literary techniques used by the author. In William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like The Sun” the author uses irony to emphasize the beauty of his mistress, by comparing her to things that show she’s not perfect but he still loves her. “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head” (Shakespeare lines 2-4) It took me a while to understand because I wasn’t really getting the point, but then I realized he was comparing her and being realistic about the woman he loves, as many poems try to idealize and exaggerate woman’s beauty, he did the opposite. My attitude while reading this changed after I read it a few times, at first I was confused, then i read it as a love poem and my technique was just reading it and trying to figure out the author’s message, technique and ideas.
