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50 Chapter 3 Reading a Poem

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Reading a Poem

Every good poem begins as the poet’s but ends as the reader’s.
—Miller WilliaMs

hat is poetry? The nature of poetry eludes simple definitions. (in this respect it is rather like jazz. asked after one of his concerts, “What is jazz?” louis armstrong replied, “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”) Definitions will be of little helpat first, if we are to know poetry and respond to it. We have to go to it willing to see and hear. For this reason, we ask you not to be in any hurry to decide what poetry is, but instead to study poems in this book and to let them grow in your mind. This chapter provides an introduction to the study of poetry. it tries to help you look at a poem closely, and to offer you a wider and more accuratevocabulary with which to express what poems say to you. Good poetry is something that readers can care about. in fact, an ancient belief of humankind is that the hearing of a poem, as well as the making of a poem, can be a religious act. Poetry, in speech and song, was part of classical Greek drama, which for playwright, actor, and spectator alike was a holy-day ceremony. The Greeks’ belief thata poet writes a poem only by supernatural assistance is clear from the invocations to the Muse that begin the Iliad and the Odyssey and from the opinion of socrates (in Plato’s Ion) that a poet has no powers of invention until divinely inspired. among the ancient Celts, poets were regarded as magicians and priests, and whoever insulted one of them might expect to receive a curse in rime potentenough to afflict him with boils and to curdle the milk of his cows. To read a poem, we have to be willing to offer it responses besides a logical understanding. if we take the reading of poetry seriously (not solemnly), we may find that— as some of the poems in this book demonstrate—few other efforts can repay us so generously, both in wisdom and in joy. let’s begin with a consideration of severaldifferent types of poetry.

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Types of Poetry 51

Types of poeTry
Lyric Poetry Originally, as its Greek name suggests, a lyric was a poem sung to the music of a lyre. This earlier meaning—a poem made for singing—is still current today, when we use lyrics to mean the words of a popular song. But the kind of printed poem we nowcall a lyric is usually something else: a short poem expressing the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker. Often a poet will write a lyric in the first person (“i”) as in W. H. auden’s “Funeral Blues,” but not always. a lyric can also be in the first person plural (“we”). Or a lyric might describe an object or recall an experience without the speaker’s ever bringing himself or herself into it.in the sense in which we use it, lyric will usually apply to a kind of poem you can easily recognize: a short poem that sets forth the speaker’s definite, unmistakable feelings.

W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden (1907–1973)
funeral Blues
stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let themourners come. let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead, Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my south, my east and West, My working week and my sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; i thought that love would last for ever: i was wrong. The stars arenot wanted now: put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
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Questions
1. in its first book publication, auden included “Funeral Blues” in a section called “lighter 2. The speaker’s emotions are never directly described. What details in the poem tell us what
the speaker...