Drummond / 2012
General Principles of Reading Lyric Poetry
1. Be Reasonable
You are responding to the apparent meaning of the poem, based on your sense of how most people
would react to the language of the poem.
In other words, while you may have your own private thoughts about a poem’s connection with your
life and experiences, your job is to create an argument about its meaning that will convince others of
its veracity – and the way to convince others is to use evidence and reason.
Dictionaries can be very helpful in this task, because they show you what people generally take as the
range of meanings for a word. The best dictionary for this task is the Oxford English Dictionary, or
O.E.D., and it can easily be found at www.oed.com. The OED is the best because (1) it is exhaustive
and (2) it shows changes in meaning over time (make sure your sense of meaning was current for the
poetry you are analyzing).
So, when Sylvia Plath writes
Poppies in October
Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly-A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky [ . . .]
it is reasonable to suggest (among other things) that “A gift,” refers to the Poppies in the title. It makes
grammatical sense. Similarly, “such” must logically refer to the large, skirt-like petals of the poppy.
And what about “the woman in the ambulance”? Her blooming heart either seems (again – use logic
here) to refer to bleeding, a heart attack, or perhaps (long shot) also there is the hint of heart as the seat
of emotion or love.
2. Lyric Poetry tends to be concerned with emotions, not plot
Don’t make up some kind of crazy plot and shoehorn it into the world of a poem. Try to let the poem
go to work on you, and realize that quite often, the poem’s meaning is simply a way of expressing a
particular mood about the world/life/society/culture. Perhaps one of the most typical observations of
poets, at least in the last two hundred years or so, is “What you might think of as ordinary is actually
pretty extraordinary.”
So in the Plath example, you might be wondering why she detours into a description of a woman in an
ambulance. A reasonable reading of this would be something like this: “The movement from the
poppies as skirts to a woman on the way to hospital jars the reader; not only is it unexpected, but it also
presents us with an image of female wounding. In the first six lines, then, there is a strange mixture of
overwhelmed by beauty and a side-glance at a painful female image.”
Or take Robert Frost’s famous poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” If asked what the
meaning of the poem is, you might reasonably say, “Nature is beautiful and provides solitude, but at
Drummond / 2012
the same time, it makes us uncomfortably aware of the obligations and pressures of society.” In other
words, don’t make up some story about the man with the horse, or his relationship with the man in the
village, or specifics about the promises that need to be kept. Proceed on what you can know from
the poem itself.
3. Pay close attention to language
Understanding the range of meanings associated with a word or phrase is key to understanding the
poem as a whole. Think about words not used rather than the ones that are used; for example, why
does the poet use the word “interrogate” rather than “question” or “demand”? What is the difference?
In Louis MacNeice’s poem “Entirely,” these lines appear:
And when we try to eavesdrop on the great
Presences it is rarely
That by a stroke of luck we can appropriate
Even a phrase entirely.
The verb “appropriate” sticks out here, not least because the sticking out is literal – it is on the end of a
line. It means “to take something for one’s own use, usually without permission.” I would argue that
this word transforms the poem into something more meaningful – imagine if instead MacNeice had
used the word “hear”? “Appropriate” helps us to understand the meaning of the poem, because we can
see a sense here that when we listen, we take what we need, and make it our own. And possibly we do
that in a selfish way. There’s a kind of negativity or selfishness about “appropriate” and it’s so
important when reading this poem that you signal your sensitivity to word choices like that.
4. Writing about Content is only half the story
Most of us tend to default to discussing “what happens.” There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s part of
the discussion. But most writers are deeply concerned with HOW they write, even down to the font
they use (the English poet Ted Hughes once insisted that his poems be published in “the blackest
Bodoni”). Always make sure that you have a mental toolbox ready for reading a poem. The tools will
probably include these:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Figurative language (metaphor, simile, personification)
Images (mental snapshots)
Sound effects (Rhyme, rhythm (meter), alliteration, etc.)
Line/stanza construction (length, enjambement)
Punctuation
Type comparison (have you seen this kind of poem before?)
When Robert Frost writes that “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” it is certainly not enough to
write something like “This line shows that the woods are attractive, large and mysterious.” This line is
almost begging to be heard, because it is so rhythmic: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” We
are almost hypnotized by the lull of the words, by the assonance of the “o” sounds, and by the
alliteration of the “d” sounds. I don’t mind you doing this just because I tell you to, but a better reason
is this: most poets are usually much more interested in technique and artistry than they are in “story.”
One of the real greats of the twentieth century, W. H. Auden, intimated that “[t]hemes and subjects for
poems . . . are less interesting to the real poet than technique” (Fussell 3).