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Reading Difficult Poetry
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0:00
Poetry's not a secret code, but it can feel like it sometimes, so what then?
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Chances are that if you've seen any video on the channel, you've seen the one about how to read poetry. It's a response to common misconceptions that I see in a lot of beginning poetry students, including myself, when I was starting out. It also accounts for about 10% of the channel's overall views, so it must address some things that you've been feeling as well. I've had a really good time reading your responses and talking about poetry with you. That said, that video was really meant as
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a step one introduction to reading poetry, and I've noticed that some of you may be ready for a step two, so I thought now would be as good a time as any to build on the foundation that we put together in that first video. Because it's true that reading poetry is not about finding the one true meaning, but that doesn't mean that poetry can't be meaningful. And while a poem is not a riddle, that doesn't mean that it can't sometimes be mysterious. The fundamental good news, though, is
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that poets write to communicate to readers. Unless they're high on their own ego or too full of their own erudition, they actually do want their readers to appreciate and understand the experiences that they package into their poems. I mean, if you really stop and think about it, it doesn't make any sense at all to publish something that you don't want people to understand. But what happens when you just can't make sense of a poem? What do you do when a basic understanding of what it's
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even talking about is hard to come by? Well, in the words of one of my former teachers, a good poem will teach you how to read it. You just need to slow down and pay careful attention to what it has to say. So in this video, I want to tell you about my first major experience with a difficult poem and show you some things that you can do to level up your reading experience when it isn't as simple as sitting next to a wheelbarrow on a rainy day. Before we get too far, I think it's worth taking a
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second to reaffirm what it is that we're doing when we're reading poetry and what we're not doing. When the going gets tough, it can be easy to forget those basic principles, so let's make sure that we're starting off on the right foot. First things first, it's important to remember that our job is not to decipher some deep, hidden or secret meaning. A poem isn't a riddle, so we don't need to end up with some reductive statement about what the poem actually means. Otherwise,
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the answer would be printed upside down at the bottom of the page. Instead, if we look back at the concept of poetic meaning that was proposed by friend of the show Kenneth Burke, we can remember that poetry derives its meaning from the heaping up of details and experiences. So the meaning of a poem comes from the way that we experience it, not in some abstract, reductive answer. When we miss the fact that poets are communicating through complex experiences rather than abstracted propositions,
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we might get the idea that they're writing in overly complicated or even pretentious ways. Why not just say what they mean in a simple sentence? Well, for a few reasons. The first of which is that a simple sentence is more likely to communicate a conceptual idea than a complex experience. Poets prioritize writing through the senses, talking about the things that can be seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled. That requires a different kind of attention and a more complex
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type of writing. But it goes further than that. Poets prize precise exact language. So rather than choose common words that just get close to expressing what they mean to say, poets look for words that express the precise meaning they're after, even if it means choosing less common words. As one of my first poetry teachers put it, "No, the carpet is not blue, it's azure." And in addition to that, poets prioritize novelty and freshness. They don't just want to talk about the same old
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things in the same old way. They want us to have new, meaningful experiences, and that often requires them to write about things that are often overlooked or to write about common things in unfamiliar ways. So it's true that we'll often run into unfamiliar words and difficult phrases when we're reading poetry. But it's important to remember that those complexities are not there to keep us in the dark. They're there to create the kind of experience that the poet wants us to have.
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Reading poetry is different from the kinds of reading that we may be more used to. For the most part, texts are interested in communicating concepts in plain functional prose, but using those reading skills with poetry will set us up for a bad time. Instead, if we go in expecting an experience, we'll be better equipped to handle what the poem sends our way. And because that's not generally how we're taught to read things, shifting into poetry mode can take some practice.
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I know it's a lot easier for me now than it was when I started out. And if you're already pretty good at it, it's important to remember that that's not because you're a better or a smarter person, it's just because you've had more practice. And practice is just what we're after, so let's get to it.
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When I was in college, I took one of those British Literature Survey courses because it was a prerequisite for something that I ended up not doing. And I mostly spent that class just passing the time until, that is, we ran into the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. As I was preparing for class one day, I sat down with my anthology, turned to the page with Hopkins poem as Kingfishers Catch Fire, and I read it. And I read it. And I read it again and understood exactly
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none of it. For the most part, I understood and recognized the individual words, but trying to put them together left me completely stumped. Forget even trying to come up with some answer about what the poem meant that I could tell my professor in class, what was it even saying at all? Clear as a blackout
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curtain, my friends. But remember, a good poem will teach us how to read it. So everything that we need to make sense of this piece is right here with us already. We just need to adapt ourselves to Hopkins' unique way of using the language. So where do we even begin? Normally, I'd recommend starting with the title. Titles often provide important contextual information that will help you to find your way into a poem. Now in this case, unfortunately, the title is just a repetition of the
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first few words of the poem, so it doesn't help us that much. But in either case, our first job is to try to understand the poem as a whole, not to try to understand each of its individual words. That means that our first job is to begin looking for patterns or anything that can give us a clue about the structure of the poem. Rather than getting bogged down in tiny details or individual words, let's just get a sense of what this poem is trying to do overall. And we get a big hint by the fact
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that the poem is divided into two stanzas. That's telling us that there's likely something that holds the ideas in each stanza together and keeps them somewhat separate from what's in the other. Naturally, it makes sense to begin with the first stanza, so let's see what it's all about. And what do we start out with? Well, a comparison. As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame. That is, in the same way that kingfishers are catching fire, dragonflies are drawing
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flame. Let's not get too hung up on what that actually means. Let's just focus on understanding the structure of the comparison We get two creatures doing similar but distinct things, and again, not worrying too much about individual words or ideas, what comes next? Well, a continuation of this list of things in the world doing what they do. As tumbled over rim and roundy wells, stones ring, like each tucked string tells, and each hung bell's bow swung finds tongue to fling out
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broad its name. So the first few lines of the poem are all doing the same thing. They're listing animals and objects and reporting some observations about what they do. So even if we don't exactly know what it means for a tucked string to tell, we can observe that the poem gives us a moment to experience a handful of things in their natural environment. And that's great, but so what? In this next line we get a shift. Hopkins isn't talking about specific things anymore. He moves
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to talk in more general terms by saying each mortal thing does one thing and the same. So, despite initial appearances that dragonflies and kingfishers and tumbled stones all do different things, Hopkins is now asserting that they're actually all doing the same thing. So we've moved from a list of specific observations to a more generalized principle that Hopkins has worked out based on the patterns he observed and shared with us. And look, this line ends with a colon. And if
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you know anything about colons, you know that what comes after a colon is logically related to what comes before. So what is it that each mortal thing does? The colon tells us that the answer is coming next. And the answer to that question is that every mortal thing is dealing out that being indoors each one dwells. And of course that can be tough to understand and it's going to get a little tougher, but Hopkins is going to teach us how to read this thing. The next line says selves, goes itself,
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myself it speaks and spells, crying what I do is me for that I came. When I read this the first time I stared at those lines for a good long while feeling as lost as I've ever felt. And I'll confess that I did get kind of hung up on that little word selves. What in the whole wide world was that noun doing there? A plural noun that shares a sentence with singular itself. Again, a good poem will teach you how to read it and it finally clicked when I remembered how dashes work.
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One of the roles that they fill is to signal that something is being rephrased or renamed. In effect, it's saying that selves means the same thing as goes itself. So selves isn't a plural noun, it's a singular verb and we get the same notion rephrased a few other times. Now we can take a step back and recognize that just as the first few lines were listing various observations from life, these next few lines are all working on a more generalized principle based on those
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observations. That every mortal thing deals out, like dealing out cards, the being that dwells inside of each one. So without spending too much time on individual words or images, we can already say that we have a pretty good idea of what the first stanza is doing in the poem. We get to experience kingfishers catching fire and strings being tucked and dragonflies drawing flame because they're all examples of the principle that every mortal thing is in the business of expressing its
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inner nature. Pluck a string and it will play a note, swing a bell and it will fling out broad its name. Everything in Hopkins' view does this same thing. In the way that it moves about the world, it will let its inner nature out. Toss a stone into a well and it will ring like no other stone. That's where the first stanza leaves us, so it's time to turn our attention to the second stanza where Hopkins has more to say. In fact, that's exactly how he says it. I say more the
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just man justices. This looks like another delightful bit of nonsense, but remember, this poem has already taught us that we're allowed to use nouns as verbs. So what are just men doing? They're justicing in the same way that all mortal things are selving. And we get this list of things again held together by semicolons telling us what just men do. They justice. They keep grace, which keeps their goings graces. They act in God's eye what in God's eye they are. And what are they?
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The dashes emphatically tell us that what they are is Christ. Again, because that's the job that dashes can do. But then the poem pivots and explains why just men do these things. For Christ plays in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men's faces. And we conclude with what must be the ultimate expression of the pattern Hopkins has uncovered. The being that dwells inside of just men is Christ. So they deal him out
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in their way of being. But that in turn is Christ's way of going himself. What he does is play to the father through the features of men's faces. For that he came. So let's take stock. What do we have here? We have a list of observations in nature that lead us to Hopkins' understanding that everything reveals its true nature through its own way of being in the world. Then he goes on to explain what that means for just men. That they express the grace that is in them, which is in
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turn an expression of Christ's identity and nature. For the Jesuit priest Hopkins, all of these things are echoes of the divine that turn his attention back to the divine. And even though the language might be difficult at first glance, we can get to a basic understanding of what he's saying by slowing down and thinking about how words and ideas are structured. So when we're looking for a basic understanding of what the poem is saying, it can be helpful to step back and look for structure
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before we get stuck on individual words. Notice how this poem seems to have a section of observations that lead to a principle that then gets applied to a new case. There's a logic to the organization that we miss if we're unwilling to move past what it really means for a kingfisher to catch fire. So again we start by looking for patterns or other signs that help us to understand how the poem is put together. Then with that understanding of how the poem works, we can go back in and start to use
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that larger context to make more sense of individual words or images. And by following that process, we can arrive at a basic understanding of what the poem is trying to say. But of course that's only half the job and the fun is just beginning.
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I want to be careful here in saying that we have begun to understand what the poem says, but that's different from what the poem means. Yes, Hopkins is making the argument that all of creation is a manifestation of the divine, but what does that mean? Who cares? If we stopped there, we would have a pretty good summary of what Hopkins says in the poem and we would have no reason to ever go back to it. We've solved the riddle, been there, done that. But of course we're
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not just reading to summarize, we're reading to experience. So now that we have this basic understanding of what the poem says, let's go back and try to live in the experience that the poem offers. I'm going to read it again, but this time instead of getting worked up about what the poem says because we already know, think instead about the experience that it offers. Pay attention to the images, listen to the sounds and rhythms of the language, reflect on what it means for you
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to experience what Hopkins has to say in the way that he says it. I mean he could have just written a theological treatise, but he didn't. He wrote a lyrical poem, so why? I'm not asking what does this poem mean, I'm asking what makes this poem a meaningful experience for you.
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This is the poem that put me on the path to poetry school. Before I read it I had no idea that poets could use language in such inventive, playful and beautiful ways. You know how you might get a song stuck in your head? Well even now I find myself repeating as tumbled over rim and roundy wells over and over again from time to time. That cascade of consonants and vowels is just beyond delightful. And each hung bell's bow swung: it's a big stack of stressed syllables that's so heavy that
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finds snaps into an unstressed syllable. Man oh man. And that's to say nothing of the simple, imagistic beauty of kingfishers catching fire and bells chiming from their towers. Of course the religious significance of the poem isn't lost on me but even from a secular standpoint it's just beautiful. As one of my former teachers put it Hopkins wrote the most gorgeous poetry in the language and that intricate linguistic beauty is meaningful enough to me that I keep coming back
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to the poem again and again. And when you think about it the poem is a demonstration of Hopkins expressing his nature even as the poem expresses its nature. It does what it's talking about. This poem is meaningful because it puts me in contact with another human being who is attuned to the world, full of faith, and absolutely smitten with the English language. It's a delight to spend time with somebody who's willing to observe and write like this. It's an experience that I
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want to have and that I want to keep having. And we've been going on for long enough so I won't even get started on Hopkins' other poems but I will just say that even though they may present similar initial challenges there's just nothing else like them. But now that you know how to deal with a difficult poem you're in pretty good shape to go check them out on your own.
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The challenge of reading poetry is the challenge of learning to read through experience than just reading for conceptual knowledge. In order to make their poetry as rich and wild as life actually is poets sometimes need to resort to inventive and unusual patterns of language that can sometimes get in the way of our basic understanding. Some poems are more accessible than others but every good poem will teach you how to read it. At its most basic, poetry is a form of communication
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so it's meant to be understood and the good ones will give you the tools you need to do it. So don't hesitate to slow down as you focus on understanding what the poem is doing as a whole rather than getting hung up on each individual word. Once people get past the mistake of being afraid of poetry the next biggest mistake they tend to make is thinking that they have to understand each individual word before moving on. So look for patterns and read for structure. Once you have a
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good sense of what the poem is doing overall you can then go back and spend some time with the rich complexities of the finer details. And above all remember that you're reading poetry in order to share a meaningful experience with another human being. Your job is not to twist and distort a pleasant afternoon in the English countryside into some demonstration of how literate and smart you are. Returning to our friend Kenneth Burke the poetic ideal can't reside in a single correct
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answer or really in anything that could be called true or false because the poetic ideal will derive its vision from the maximum heaping up of all these emotional factors. Playing them off against one another, inviting them to reinforce and contradict one another and seeking to make this active participation itself a major ingredient of the vision. So go enjoy those poems even the difficult ones. Your job isn't to figure out what they mean but instead to participate in the
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experiences they offer and find in that what makes them meaningful. And while you do I'll look forward to seeing you again soon.
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