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Guide to Reading Poetry the Following Outline Serves As An © Stavenhagen; 2004; 2014 ! Guide to Reading! Poetry The following outline serves as an approach to the close reading, or analysis of poetry. The ideas and terms should not preclude other ways of looking at poetry but rather be used to glean meaning. As such, they are secondary prompts to the poem itself and the experience it elicits from you as a reader. For EWP 300, note mostly the underlined !words as a guide for your reading of poems from the anthology Ecopoetry. !I. Background Reading a Poem (Analytical reading of a poem) A. Read the poem through a few times. 1. Read it through at least once out loud and note where it makes sense to pause. 2. After reading it the second or third time, let yourself stop and ponder the lines. B. Examine the title—probe its meaning or relationship to the poem C. Do scansion (see next page). For example, look at punctuation and line breaks. Ask how they might contribute to the meaning of the poem D. Examine the break of stanzas (method of the poem). Usually each stanza will present one dominant idea. 1. Usually the second to last stanza establishes a transition to the closing cap thought. 2. Usually the closing cap thought is contained in a closing couplet. E. Especially examine imagery, metaphors and symbols that beg interpretation. F. Identify the diction of the author: the denotative (explicitly dictionary definition of a word) and the connotative (secondary meaning derived from association) words used. (“Having and using a good dictionary is the way 1 ! you pay your respects to the poet’s medium.”) sample !II. Thematic Reading of a poem A. Write down what you believe is the main idea of the poem. The poem may be a description or dramatization of a particular experience. On the other hand, the poet may generalize from an experience, explicitly or implicitly. Either way, the poem will be about something. Name it. B. Find the “Manner” of the poem. Manner is a qualitative form of mood expressed in the perceived attitude of the speaker and the tone—the ! apparent emotion and point of view of the speaker. 1 Quote from Dr. Robert Dunn, “An Outline—Guide to the Reading of Poetry”. Thanks to him and his work for much of the material in this handout. © Stavenhagen; 2004; 2014 III. Consideration of Cultural Context—Once you analyze a poem’s form and collective theme, it can be helpful to consider its cultural context: to what degree does the poem still speak to U.S. society or another nation’s current society? What did the poem say in its original cultural context? To what extent has the poem taken on new and varied meaning since the time it was written? ! How does it still challenge our views of reality? !Appendix on Scansion (and definitions of terms used in poetry) Sometimes it is helpful to describe a poem in terms of its meter, line length, and rhyme !scheme. This is called scansion. !I. Meter—the meter of a poem is the measurement of its basic rhythm. II. Rhythm—the recurrent pattern of sound running through a poem. Rhythm is more marked in poetry than in prose. English generally follows an accentual syllabic meter. This means that our rhythms may be best analyzed in terms of stressed and unstressed syllables. A stressed syllable is one that receives a relatively greater emphasis than those syllables just before and after it in the ! poetic line. III. Metrical foot—the basic metrical unit that consists of one, two, or three syllables, only one of which is normally stressed: A. Iamb (iambic foot) : Example is agree B. Trochee (trochaic foot): “meter” C. Anapest (anapestic foot): “supersede” D. Dactyl (dactylic foot): “practical” !E. Spondee (spondaic foot): “humdrum” IV. Line Length—a line described by the number of feet it contains (iambic pentameter is the most common). Two syllables=foot. A. One foot=monometer B. Two feet: dimeter C. Three feet: trimeter D. Four feet: tetrameter E. Five feet: pentameter F. Six feet: hexameter G. Seven feet: heptameter !H. Eight feet: octameter ! V. Rhyme Scheme A. End rhyme—rhyme at the end of a line © Stavenhagen; 2004; 2014 !B. Internal rhyme—rhyme within the line VI. Stanzaic forms A. Triplet: three succeeding lines rhyming aaa B. Tera Rime: iambic pentameter lines within the first and third rhyming, the second line lien rhyming with the first and third of the following stanza (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.) C. Ballad stanza: a four-line stanza of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter lines, rhyming abcd D. Rhyme Royal: seven lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ababbcc. Chaucer used this stanza in two of the stories in his Canterbury Tales, and also in his Troilus and Criseyde. E. Ottava Rima: eight lines of iambic pentameter rhyming abababcc (e.g. Byron’s Don Juan) F. Spenserian Stanza: a nine-line stanza rhyming ababbcbcc. The first eight lines are in iambic pentameter, the ninth in iambic hexameter. Used in Spenser’s Faire Queene. G. Fixed forms: 1. The Sonnet. Fourteen iambic pentameter lines. 2. The English or Shakespearian: rhymes abab cdcd efef gg (three quatrains and a concluding couplet) 3. Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet: rhymes ababbdbd in the octave and rhymes variously in the sestet (e.g. cdcdcd or cdecde) 4. Sestina: a poem in six line stanzas and a concluding three-line stanza. Rather than employing end-rhyme, the sestina uses a repetition of the terminal words of lines. In the strict sestina this order of word repetition is employed: abcdef faebdc cfdabe ecbfad deacfb bdfeda eca. 5. Blank Verse: lines of iambic pentameter. Unrhymed. 6. Free Verse: the verse does not follow a definite pattern of meter or rhyme. While free verse is basically a continuous form, its is often arrange in strophe-like units. While rejecting strict restraints of meter and rhyme, writers of free verse usually employ rhythms of varying degrees of looseness and such ordering devices as assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds, with the consonant sounds differing), and alliteration (the repetition of consonant ! sounds, usually at the beginning of the succeeding words). VII. Other Helpful Terms A. End-stopped lines: a line with the pause at the end. B. Run-on lines (enjambment): a line with no pause at the end. C. The caesura: a pause within a line. .
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