How to Read Poetry

“If I have become something of an expert reader of poems, it is in part because long ago, I learned to linger on the surface of things, rather than push past their specifics in order to arrive quickly at instant profundity.”

Poetry is best read as it is best written: first with the ear, second with the eye, third with the mind. This holds true whether one is speaking of formal or “informal” poetry (free verse), whether traditional or experimental. An impediment gets removed as well when one tries not to discern immediately what is going on behind poetry, whether that is symbolic content, literary references of the kind signaled by the many footnotes in the Norton Anthology of Poetry, or any other type of intertextual decoding. Do those aspects of it exist? Of course they do. But when they become obstacles to reading, that is to say, experiencing poetry, they are best left alone until one is ready. You can always get to esoterica later, if you get comfortable enough to want to nerd out on poetics. If I have become something of an expert reader of poems, it is in part because long ago, I learned to linger on the surface of things, rather than push past their specifics in order to arrive quickly at instant profundity. I snorkel the coral reef, brimming with brilliant schools of small, radiant fish, rather than scuba dive to the black expanses in the lower depths of the sea.

Basic technical knowledge of how poetry works is as useful to the casual reader as to the poet, however informally and unsystematically that is acquired. Often it can be gleaned through the sheer experience of careful, patient reading, inductively. Many things in life we learn intuitively and by exposure. For yes, that is the one thing poetry requires—patience—whether we are speaking of the epic verses of William Carlos Williams’ Paterson or Hart Crane’s The Bridge, or the modest yet indirect musings of Emily Dickinson. Poetry is a somatic experience, enlivening the body as well as the mind, the way love does, or excellent food, or a single, delicious glass of wine.

What is a line? What is a stanza? What is the difference between a couplet, a tercet, and a quatrain? (Stanzas of one line, two lines, three lines, four lines.) What is each apt for? What can it do? If you figure out from listening to the blues that its stanzaic structure consists of one line, which then gets repeated as the second, followed by a third line, a “zinger” that puts a punctuation point on the emotion expressed, and you understand such a song consists of a series of tercets that can go on for any length of time, but usually for five or six minutes with an instrumental break in the middle, you will have no trouble listening to a blues tune and enjoying it without complicating your life unnecessarily. You have more or less figured out, in terms of stanzaic form, what makes a blues song simultaneously down to earth, and philosophical. The music helps you feel the poem and keeps you from overly intellectualizing or stressing that you do not get what it is “really” about.