{"id":4268,"date":"2021-04-16T16:37:03","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T16:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=4268"},"modified":"2025-01-09T21:51:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T21:51:45","slug":"how-to-read-a-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/how-to-read-a-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Read a Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Poetry\"<\/a>It\u2019s actually not that hard: find one and start reading!<\/p>\n

OK, that was a little glib\u2013\u2013when we talk about how to read a poem, we\u2019re talking about how to process a poem as we read it. Often people worry that they\u2019re missing something when they read a poem, some decoder ring that would help them make sense of what they\u2019re looking at. There are bestselling books<\/a> out there that promise to explain<\/a> how the professionals interpret poems, tapping into the market of people who feel like they should<\/em> appreciate or \u201cget\u201d poetry more than they do.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2013\u2013reading poetry \u2018well,\u2019 in the sense of getting something out of it that not everyone might notice, is indeed a professional skill! (That\u2019s why they call them professors, to make a long etymological story short.) But it\u2019s not a high priesthood, or some inherent ability you either have or you don\u2019t. It\u2019s a skill you can pick up with practice, and a hobby you can enjoy at any level. Think about it this way: you don\u2019t have to be a professional player or coach or scout in order to enjoy sports. As you watch more or listen to experts you might come to appreciate them in a new way, but you don\u2019t need to know the ins and outs of the triangle offense in order to get excited about a dunk, or be able to tell a fastball from a splitter to marvel at a home run.<\/p>\n

That means you don\u2019t need to know the difference between an iamb and a trochee in order to enjoy a poem (though if you\u2019d like to know, this<\/a> is a good explainer). With that in mind I want to share a poem that I enjoy, and what I like about it\u2013\u2013no iambs or trochees involved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Natasha Trethewey<\/p>\n

Rotation<\/strong> (2010)
\n\"Child<\/a><\/p>\n

Like the moon that night, my father\u2014<\/p>\n

a distant body, white and luminous.<\/p>\n

How small I was back then,<\/p>\n

looking up as if from dark earth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Distant, his body white and luminous,<\/p>\n

my father stood in the doorway.<\/p>\n

Looking up as if from dark earth,<\/p>\n

I saw him outlined in a scrim of light.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My father stood in the doorway<\/p>\n

as if to watch over me as I dreamed.<\/p>\n

When I saw him outlined\u2014a scrim of light\u2014<\/p>\n

he was already waning, turning to go.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once, he watched over me as I dreamed.<\/p>\n

How small I was. Back then,<\/p>\n

he was already turning to go, waning<\/p>\n

like the moon that night\u2014my father.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gorgeous, right? (If you don\u2019t agree, no worries\u00ad\u2013\u2013go find a poem that you do find gorgeous, my taste is very finicky and yours might be too.) The poem reminds me of the feeling of being a child, and how much your world revolves around your parents<\/strong> when you\u2019re small. Trethewey captures that feeling with the simile of the moon and the earth, the literal world<\/strong> and the thing that literally revolves<\/strong> around it.* (This kind of central image that runs throughout the poem is often called the \u201cconceit.\u201d) I remember bedtime rituals as a kid: those memories can seem like a single night in my mind, like this poem is about a single night, but they\u2019re built up out of the rituals that helped me cope as a small child with being separated from my parents each night, alone in my room.<\/p>\n

Those rituals became special to me through repetition, night after night. You probably noticed that the poem repeats lines from one stanza (block of lines) to the next. Go back and look at the pattern of repetition: the second and fourth lines of one stanza become the first and third of the next, finally closing the circle with the final stanza. This format is called a pantoum<\/strong>, but you don\u2019t need to know the name in order to appreciate how it changes the experience of reading the poem: the repetition makes it feel almost a little magical, like an incantation. The accumulated effect of hearing those lines that sound familiar in slightly different combinations puts you in a sort of dream-like state\u2013\u2013like a little kid falling asleep.<\/p>\n

You might also notice how the poem emphasizes the distance between the speaker (the child) and her father. \u201cA distant body, white and luminous\u201d\u2026 \u201calready waning, turning to go.\u201d Is that feeling of distance familiar? When you\u2019re little, the world of adults seems big and far away and incomprehensible, like the moon in the sky. That can be particularly the case with fathers sometimes: according to traditional gender roles fathers are not primary caregivers during the day, and so their love can seem almost mysterious in comparison to the familiar presence of a mother (particularly for men of the stereotypically strong, silent type). You might get the feeling that this is the dynamic between Trethewey (or the speaker of this poem, at any rate) and her father. The memory of him \u201calready waning, turning to go\u201d suggests that he might leave the family at some point later on? We can\u2019t say for sure whether the father in the poem does or doesn\u2019t leave; it\u2019s a poem, not a murder mystery. What happens next is sort of beside the point, anyway: the point is that feeling<\/em> of distance, the childhood fear, or perhaps intuition, that the father won\u2019t always be there.<\/p>\n

You might also notice that alongside these images of distance, the father is described as \u201cwhite and luminous\u201d (like the moon) and the speaker associated with \u201cdark earth.\u201d The poet, Natasha Trethewey, is mixed-race and has talked about her complicated relationship with her white father, who was also a poet\u2013\u2013a feeling that this racial difference hung over their relationship, adding to a sense of distance between them. (Trethewey\u2019s father did indeed leave the family; her parents divorced when she was six.) Knowing a little more about Trethewey adds another layer to your understanding of the poem, doesn\u2019t it? It confirms the intimate, personal tone of the poem, and it helps us understand why the \u201cdistance\u201d of the father-as-moon goes hand in hand with the image of him as \u201cwhite and luminous.\u201d But you don\u2019t need<\/em> to know Trethewey\u2019s biography in order to appreciate the poem or to pick up this sense of a distance between the speaker and her father, and the details of her life aren\u2019t a hidden code that cracks the case. Instead, this kind of information allows you to reread the poem in a new way, noticing things you might not have before (like that light and dark imagery, for instance). But if you recognized a familiar feeling or image in the poem\u2013\u2013like a parent\u2019s silhouette in the doorway at bedtime\u2013\u2013expressed in a new and striking way, then you\u2019ve already appreciated or \u201cgotten\u201d it. The rest is just deepening that understanding, and hopefully the enjoyment too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*\u00a0 You might say that the image is a little complicated: I said that as a child your world revolves around your parents, but in this poem the parent (the moon) is likened to the object that revolves around the child (the earth). If you have an interpretation of what seems like an odd aspect of the image, fantastic! These are the kinds of things that English papers are written about\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s actually not that hard: find one and start reading! OK, that was a little glib\u2013\u2013when we talk about how to read a poem, we\u2019re talking about how to process … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":449,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,27,46,34,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r4r","category-little-free-library","category-poetry","category-staff-picks","category-summer-tales"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Read a Poem - Books We Read<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/how-to-read-a-poem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Read a Poem - Books We Read\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s actually not that hard: find one and start reading! 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