ON READING LYRIC POETRY
Enjoyment of lyric poetry, like enjoyment of any other genre, depends in
part on knowledge of its conventions. To what extent are these familiar or
unfamiliar? What do we already know that can make us very comfortable
with reading a lyric poem?
We are in fact familiar with two kinds of popular "texts" that bear
some similarity to and have some of the same "feel" as lyric poetry. We
also know how to recognize a lyric poem when we see one (more
important than we might at first think), as well as how, in general, we
are expected to read it. Finally, we know more about two of its special
conventions, "stanza" form and the "speaker," than we may realize.
Lyric Poetry and Familiar Popular "Texts"
Lyric poetry makes its impact in a very brief space. It stresses moments of
feeling. It is often quite memorable. In these and several other ways, lyric
poems resemble two other kinds of "texts" with which we are quite familiar:
ninety-second popular songs and fifteen-second television commercials. Both
of these aim, in extremely brief time, to capture moments of feeling. Both aim
to imprint themselves in our memory. To achieve this, besides repeated air
play, both use internal forms of repetition.
In pop songs, there is a strong emphasis on rhythm, on "the beat," a
very basic way of using repetition to aid memory. The best songs also
use striking images and are about subjects that concern us. They may
relate a memorable incident and tell of its lasting emotional
implications. Refrains, catch phrases, and other verbal devices invite us
to remember the specific words so that we will sing them--as the record
is being played, afterwards to ourselves, and finally on our way to the
record store.
Television commercials also present striking images, sometimes in
very quick sequence--a series of "poetic" fragments that try to associate
the particular product with a feeling or goal that is highly valued
(friendship, health, social status, or love). Some of the best are like
mini-dramas, telling brief, emotionally appealing "stories." A first-born
child, disturbed by all the fuss over a newly arrived baby, says
plaintively, "I have blue eyes too"; he is taken by his father to
MacDonald's, for a "man-to-man talk," where a new role is offered to
him, to be a teacher of the younger child. A teen-age girl complains
tearfully to her friends about her mother--"She's so much prettier than
me"--until she smiles, realizing that at the same age, her mother looked
"exactly like me." Accompanying these commercials, there is also a
strong musical element, either as background or as a catchy tune with
catchy words to it. To sell the product, story and music and verbal
devices all aim at being memorable.
The earliest poetry of every culture also aimed at being remembered.
It had to. Without the resources of mass printing, it could only survive
through oral transmission. There were many repeat performances.
Mnemonic verbal devices, a "story" which engaged the concerns and
values of the culture, and strong musical elements existed here too (the
poems were sung or chanted to musical accompaniment). Medieval
popular ballads were not printed until the fifteenth century. These were
generally story-songs that used refrains, as well as "incremental
repetition" (lines that change only slightly in each appearance).
Our pop songs and commercials today are in part the inheritors of
ballad and other popular traditions. But they also echo more consciously
"literary" forms (in literary history, there is constant exchange). In
particular, they use two conventions of lyric poetry which developed in
the nineteenth century. First, as the lyric moved "up" in the hierarchy of
literary genres, the objects and situations it described "descended,"
became more commonplace, more everyday. This was one of
Wordsworth's major innovations. Second, the place of "action" or
"story," of primary importance in literature since Aristotle, shifted.
Feelings became primary. Wordsworth said that feelings gave
importance to the action and situation, not the other way around. Both of
these conventions of the nineteenth century lyric-- emphasis on
everyday events and on a "story" that exists mostly for the feelings it
expresses--may be seen operating in a great many commercials and
popular songs today (think of any Country and Western song).
To sum up, because we are familiar with these brief, popular "texts,"
we may, in a general way, be more familiar than we realize with the
conventions and codes of lyric poetry.
Lyric Poetry: The Conventions We Already Know
In lyric poetry, there are some very basic conventions that we already
"know," without even thinking about them. What would most of us expect to
see in a lyric poem? How would we expect to read it?
1. Stanzas
2. Lyric epiphanies and lyric speakers
Adapted from A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies
6, Landmarks of Literature, ©Brooklyn College.