Reading Poetry

Poetry Analysis II

Readings

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 18”, “Sonnet 60”, “Sonnet 65.” Poetry Foundation.

Spenser, Edmund. “Amoretti LXXV”, “Amoretti LXXXI.” Poetry Foundation.

Sidney, Philip. “Astrophil and Stella 1”, “Astrophil and Stella 31.” Poetry Foundation.

Larkin, Philip. “Sad Steps.” In Collected Poems. Farrar, Straus and Grioux, 2004. ISBN: 9780374529208.

Brooks, Gwendolyn. “my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell.” In Selected Poems. Harper & Row, 1963. ISBN: 9780060909895.

Brooks, Gwendolyn. “the rites for Cousin Vit.” In The Norton Anthology of Poetry Fifth Edition. W.W. Norton and Company, 2005. ISBN: 9780393979206.

Johnson, James. “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” In Complete Poems. Penguin Classics, 2000. ISBN: 9780374518172.

Bishop, Elizabeth. “One Art.” In The Complete Poems 1926-1979. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983. ISBN: 9780374518172.

Collins, Martha. “The Story We Know.” Poetry. December, 1980.

Hayes, Terence. “The Golden Shovel.” In Lighthead. Penguin Books, 2010. ISBN: 9780143116967.

Things to mark up/questions to ask when you read a poem (a running list):

This is an expansion of the questions in the first poetry analysis.

1. Are there repetitions, exact (“cold dark deep and absolutely clear”) or with variation (“the squat pen rests [, snug as a gun.][. I’ll dig with it]”)? Pay attention to them!
2. Are there regularities in line length?
   1. What controls or motivates the end of a line?
   2. If the lines aren’t all the same number of syllables (aka, in a regular meter), does variation in line length correlate to anything in the poem?
3. Ask the same question about stanzas—if there is not a regular stanza form (as in Heaney, “Digging”), where do verse paragraphs get longer or shorter?
   1. If there is (as in Moore, “The Fish,” e.g.), how do topics (and sometimes sentences) get distributed in and across stanzas?
4. Is there an organized rhythm?
   1. If yes, are there places of important variation in pattern or emphasis?
   2. Think also about repeated patterns of syntax as contributing to rhythm (e.g., 3x “Adjective was the noun I verbed,” in Dunbar), and notice where these patterns of syntax change (as in the last line of that poem).
5. Are units of meaning (phrases and sentences) aligned with units of meter, so lines end with punctuation—or not?
   1. Are there places that stand out as different, as in, the only end-stopped line or enjambment or caesuras?
   2. Or does the general “habit” of the poem (e.g., to end each line with punctuation) change at some point?
6. What places and times exist in the poem?
   1. Does the verb tense or mood shift (e.g. from past to present, from declarative—“I saw”—to conditional—“I would have seen”)?
7. Who is in it? Where and when are they?
   1. Where: “offstage”, near/far in Frost.
   2. When: remembered past, Yeats; past + ongoing present, Whitman.
8. Who is speaking and being spoken to or about? Pronouns: I, we, they, you (who?), one (so formal and impersonal!).
9. Are there key terms (“home”) being evaluated and/or vocabularies of words grouped under related concepts (worth and value)?

Questions to ask about a poem: if they seem boring/trivial OR too hard/confusing to answer, they might not be the most revealing questions about a given poem. But all are worth trying!

Punctuation Examples

[1] Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

[2] element bearable to no mortal,

[3] to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly

[4] I have seen here evening after evening.

Lines 1, 2, and 4 are end-stopped: they conclude with punctuation. Line 3 has a midline pause (any kind of punctuation): that’s a caesura. The sentence that begins after “…” continues across the line ending with no pause: that’s enjambment.