PHILLIT Session 4: Understanding Poetry 1 -- Poetry for Dummies

Reminder: Don't forget to email me your good and bad song lyrics. We'll discuss them this Thursday or next Tuesday.

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The biggest difference between poetry and normal language is the peculiar use of words. (Good) Poetry stretches the boundaries of language and tries to make us see things in a new light. The problem is in determining which poems are "good" and which aren't.

My first tip is so obvious that students do it all the time without acknowledging it. You probably did it when you chose your piece for the poetry reading. You first need to check the context of the poem. This means that stuff found in textbooks or reputable anthologies* are probably good, while rhymes in noontime show songs are probably not.

The next tip is to check the content of the poem. You need to determine if it's saying something new about the human condition or it's saying something old in a new or creative way. Examples I gave were Pablo Neruda's "Tonight I can write the saddest lines," which says something old (I am sad) in a new and more dramatic way.

Then you need to look for imagery, which is key to poetry. Those words need to paint pictures in your mind to sear the poet's message. This is where most songs and love poems (the kind you find in high school newspapers) fail as poetry; they just say things without painting pictures. In those cases they're little better than prose. Shelley's "Ozymandias" is a great example of a poem that paints an ironic picture.

After that you need to check if those images symbolize anything. In good poems (heck, in most good literature) everything stands for something else.

Next post will be on prosody, which we touched on with my explanation of iambic pentameter and the analysis of Hardy's "The Man He Killed."

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*"Reputable" is key. Some of you got your poems from books which are obviously self-published. There's no assurance of quality with those.