Tips on Reading Poetry

 

1. RELAX. If you don't understand a line or a passage, so what. Just keep reading.
   
   
2. Freaking SLOW DOWN. Poems aren't TV commercials. They're meant to be savored, enjoyed, re-read, thought about, felt. TV advertisements rarely ask you to actively engage your mind and heart. Poems ask this of your constantly. They're needy little things. They want to be cared about.
   
   
3.  Read for voice, texture, sound. Just enjoy language like you did when you were a kid, learning to talk. Yeah, you need a good grade in this class, but, believe it not, to GET a good grade you may have to suspend all awareness of grades for a bit and just DIG what you're encountering. Sometimes understanding sneaks in through a side door, when you're not looking. Enjoy whatever odd, new, twisted, or beautiful thing the poet is doing with words, even it you don't completely get it.
   
   
4. Don't read the poem the way you read a newspaper. You're not reading for INFORMATION. You're reading for the experience of the poem. Its main "meaning" or meanings are generally conveyed through nuance, suggestion, intuitive association—not in-your-face-VCR repair manual-1-2-3-frontal lobe-quiz tomorrow-utilitarian-completely conscious REASON.
   
   
5. Read the poem aloud, SLOWLY.
   
   
6. Copy the whole poem. Just type the thing exactly, word for word.
   
   
7. Print the poem out and hang it on your refrigerator.
   
   
8. Write a poem imitating the one you are reading.
   
   
9. If, when reading a particular poem, you're utterly lost, don't understand a thing, and aren't getting anything whatsoever out of it, do the following:
   

a.      Relax.

b.     Go back over the piece, line by line, and mark the FIRST place where you get confused. 

c.      Ask yourself at least 3 questions about that precise point in the poem.

d.     Imagine possible answers to your questions.

e.      Look up answers to those questions on the Web, use a freaking dictionary, call a classmate, or email your instructor.

f.       Re-read or skim any relevant class material about the poem in question or the poet in question. Look for clues and information that will help you know how to APPROACH the poem in question.

g.      Put the poem away and read it again tomorrow.

h.      Read it again the next day.

i.       Read it again the day after that.

j.    Read it again in ten years. Really.

h.    Come to our next class with specific questions.

10)     Relax, drink 3 beers, near-beers, or whatever it is you like, and read the poem again.