I honestly could never “read between the lines” or think of the bigger picture when reading poems. When reading “We Real Cool” By Gwendolyn Brooks I assumed the poem was obvious when I fully read it. This is the prior assumption I made from “How to read a poem”. I read the poem very easily and didn’t make any “think outside the box” assumptions when reading it. I didn’t think of the bigger picture. To me the poem is about kids being kids. Having all the freedom in the world to be a kid. To ditch school sometimes or maybe even underage drink wouldn’t kill you. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. Most people will say the bigger picture is young kids with destructive behavior. Like I said, Its kids being kids. However the line “we left school” is confusing me as it ditching school? or dropping out of school? if it is dropping out of school and all you are doing is drinking alcohol and singing, That is destuctive behavior that can have a early demise.
Daily Archives: April 23, 2023
While reading poems I always have a problem which is I always think I will understand it on the first reading and feel like there’s something wrong with me since I never understand what it means immediately. This is the prior assumption I made, of the three mentioned in “how to read a poem.” While reading “White lies” by Natasha Trethewey I started reading so confidently and thought I could understand it at first reading just by reading its title. When I was done I noticed I didn’t get its meaning or what was really behind it and had to go back, read it slowly, and analyze it. At first, I thought it was just about a little girl lying, but after reading it back, word by word, I understood it had something to do with color and race. “I could even keep quiet, quiet as kept, like the time a white girl said (squeezing my hand), Now we have three of us in this class.” The girl felt like lying was the only way white people would be nice to her. She would lie about where she lived, and also about being African American.
One of the poems I read was “White Lies’ by Natasha Trethewey. While I first starting reading the poem, I couldn’t fully grasp what exactly it was that I was reading. This is when I had encounter with the first assumption, which is that readers think they should understand what it is that they are reading on the first read, which is not true. We all read and interpret things differently. Eventually, I had to read the poem over a few times to really get a feel about what I was reading, and the story behind it. The speaker in the poem appears to be a young black female, who lives on the poorer side of town, but says she can get away with telling the white people that she lives in a better area. I was feeling a sense of shame from the speaker’s point of view. Her mother had punished her for lying about who she was. Overall, I’d say the meaning behind this story is all about the difference in racial dynamics.
The act of reading a poem involves more than simply scanning the words on the page. It requires both an appropriate attitude and the technical ability to analyze the poem’s structure and meaning. A reader must approach a poem with an open mind and a willingness to engage with its themes and ideas. At the same time, the reader must have the necessary skills to decode the poem’s language, syntax, and imagery, as well as an understanding of poetic devices such as meter, rhyme, and metaphor. By combining the right mindset and the appropriate techniques, a reader can fully appreciate a poem’s beauty and complexity, unlocking its deeper meanings and insights. My personal experience reading “My Mistress” gave me trouble and led to confusion because of how the author talked about his mistress in the poem led me to believe that he didn’t think too highly of her until the end i assumed that the author was talking in code since i could not understand why would he put other things before his mistress these lines in the poem sounded like little insults for his mistress. “And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks” “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know [10]That music hath a far more pleasing sound”
After reading “White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey, I initially didn’t understand the poem’s deeper meaning. This lack of understanding led me to assume that something was wrong with me or the poem itself. However, upon further reflection and analysis, I came to realize that the poem was exploring the idea of lying as a survival mechanism for people of color in a society where white people hold power and privilege. The speaker in the poem, a young Black girl, quotes “I could easily tell the white folks that we lived uptown, not in that pink and green shanty-fled shotgun section along the tracks. I could act like my homemade dresses came straight out the window of Maison Blanche”. tells white people that she lives in a more affluent area, rather than admitting to living in a poorer neighborhood near the train tracks. The poem also touches on the idea of shame and the internalized racism that can lead people to disavow their own cultural roots. The speaker’s mother punishes her daughter for these lies, “Mama found out. She laid her hands on me, then washed out my mouth with Ivory soap”. Revealing the desire for honesty and authenticity in one’s identity. Overall, the poem explores complex themes of identity, race, and power dynamics, and it takes time and reflection to fully appreciate its significance.
I read both We Cool as well as The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks. The reason I read both, other than I was interested by both titles, was because the prior assumption I made when reading We Cool, was that I would understand the piece with the first run through. And full transparency, I felt as if I SHOULD understand because I am a voracious reader of poems, lol. The lines “we sing sin, we thin gin” I didn’t quite understand and I still don’t understand what ‘thin gin’ is. I will look it up after I finish responding to this discussion, but I assumed it has something to do with hanging out and drinking. After reading the poem once again, a little slower and without the assumptions, I gathered the meaning of the poem. I then, liked the writing and Gwendolyn’s writing style. I also learned she does not have one style from reading both pieces.
“Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique.” Restated: Reading a poem isn’t about the words, it’s how you read it and HOW you read it. – This is absolutely true. Reading poetry, is so different from reading an essay, or a play or any other works of literature because you have to FEEL the author’s emotion. Poetry paints pictures of intangible things – moods, emotions, thoughts, “vibes”. The phrase that reading a poem is part attitude and part technique means having a certain technique to understand and reiterate the inflections in the words. Having the right attitude is diving into the poem. Reading poetry can’t (well shouldn’t) be done because you HAVE to, but because you WANT to. 2. Reading Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare, I found this piece funny and ironic. I read this, with all the love I felt Shakespeare had for his mistress. He didn’t think very highly of her physical appearance or or scent, but the love was incomparable. The writing seems to be belittling the mistress at first, with the comparison to hair like wires and her breath that is not like perfume. However, at the end of the piece with the words “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.‘ there is no denying the love. I read this piece with a whimsical and smitten heart, as if he was just thinking of his mistress. The attitude felt was she may not be the prettiest, and she may not have the best scent – she’s no Snow White – the “fairest of them all”, but I love her perhaps more than YOU love your spouse. Reading this short piece required a technique to feel the emotions and paint the picture of what he was […]
Three prior assumptions that I made while reading the poem “White Lies” by Natasha Tretheway are assuming that everything in the poem is literal, assuming that the poem has one definitive interpretation, and that the poem is an expression of the poet’s personal feelings. Even though the poem is definitely personal, it also addresses wider socioeconomic themes. In order to examine more general questions of race and identity, including the ways in which societal pressures can have a negative impact on people, Tretheway draws on her personal experiences. The poem offers comments about the world in which the poet lives in addition to being a personal expression of her sentiments. Lines 3–4 of the poem use the speaker’s description of herself as “light-bright, near-white, high-yellow, red-boned” to show how complex racial identity might be. These descriptions are intended to explore the speaker’s experiences with identity and race instead of to be taken literally.
As Edward Hirsch so aptly put it in his article “How to Read a Poem”, when approaching an unfamiliar poem, readers tend to make three false assumptions and the one I made was to think that the whole poem was a kind of code where every detail corresponds to a single thing and if I wanted to understand it I had to decipher it. I made this mistake when reading the poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” written by William Butler Yeats in which the author just expresses his desire to find calm and peace by going to live alone on an island <<And I shall have some peace there, for peace slowly descends>>. For me this poem was hiding an unknown meaning and I started looking for it until I applied the literary techniques explained in Edward Hirsch’s article and then I realized my mistake.
