Stages of reading and analyzing a poem

A lot of things to consider: why read poetry? why write poetry? how to read a poem? how to write a poem? To help figure these things out, I'll probably be going over these questions again and again in blog posts, starting with this one.

I'm working through an analysis of Thomas Wyatt's "He is not ded that sometym hath a fall" and using this method, so I thought I would write out my method and then post the actual poem and analys(es).

Three+ stages
First readings are peculiar things—almost entirely worthless in comprehension, yet entirely necessary for a second reading, where comprehension begins. Like anything in life, reading a poem involves three stages: where it is new, thrilling, and misunderstood; where it is good work but work nonetheless; and where it pays off as something deep, rich, and hard-earned, that makes life more meaningful.

In the first contact, where the very newness of the thing provokes a lively interest, along with striking some emotional chord, we love something that does not exist—yet our ignorance and misplaced adoration is a tool to guide us to the more difficult truth. We must love what the thing is like and is not (ie the selfish drive—love what we see of our own self and opinions in it) in order to get to what it really is, and move to the beyond-ourself which feels like that “eureka” moment of epiphany—and why that moment feels so awesome. For example, if you first get a crush on someone because they give you special attention, and only later love them in all their faults. And in poetry, I first enjoy a poem because it has pleasing sounds or an image I like, or reminds me of an emotion I’ve been feeling and wanting a way to express, but on analysis, I find something rich and complicated—a reason the poem in itself is wonderful even if it doesn’t relate to me at all.

In the second stage, analysis, I focus on different words and lines of the poem trying to see what forms, themes, and images the poet uses. Guides on reading poetry always say “start with form” and they mean “Is it a sonnet? A villanelle? Free verse?” When you are first beginning to read poetry, this is important, but only so much as keeping your balance on a bike is important when you’re first learning to ride—after a few goes, you will hardly think about it, unless something tricky happens—a bump in the road, or a noteworthy variation in form (for example, Gerard Manley Hopkins is known for his novel variation on the sonnet). What is more important than being able to recognize “this is a sonnet” or “this is free verse,” is to think about how form strengthens or works with (or against!) content. For example, you might say “The poet writes about waves coming in and going out, and I notice that the word “waves” occurs at the beginning of the first line, the end of the second line, and back near the beginning of the third line—the way the poet builds the word into the lines (form) imitates the way waves come in and out (content).” Or you might notice “this poem is about grieving, yet the poet used triple meter, common in nursery rhymes, which gives the poem an uncomfortable and inappropriate sing-song quality.”

Along with how structure works in the poem, you should look at what kind of vocabulary is being used. Shakespeare, for example, will draw from different areas of trade or seasons for his metaphors, which provide a set of words for each stanza. A stanza might revolve around words related to a season, like “Winter / dark days/ freezing / December’s bareness” or accounting “lack / waste / canceled [debt] / expense / tell over (i.e. count) / account.” Are the words everyday words, or highly flourished? Does the poet start fancy “Loving in truth and fain in verse my love to show” and end simple “Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write!”?

In this stage, we break down (without breaking) the poem into all its pieces, its mechanics, its lego blocks. We start to form an idea of what the poem “looks” like—for example “It sort of has three sections, because in lines 1-4 it uses a season metaphor, in lines 5-8 it uses a setting sun metaphor, and in lines 9-12 it uses the metaphor of fire” or “the same word keeps cropping up, at different times, and sometimes with different meanings, so the poem kind of has a question about this word, or revolves around it.” Now you may start to see that what you felt on your first reading “this poem is beautiful” or “this poem makes me feel hopeful” starts to morph into “I actually misread what that line meant—it’s subtle, but what it actually means is even cooler!/not as cool!” or “this poem sounds hopeful but it’s a particular kind of Christian hope—the hope of someone completely broken, who won’t survive this round, but hopes in a future resurrection.” In this stage, the poem starts to feel more solid to you, something tangible, certain lines and words are starting to stick in your head, and you think maybe you’ve got it figured out.

Except you have still only gone from admiring your reflection in the surface to scratching the surface—the real excavation of meaning occurs in stage three (and four and five and six, etc., unearthing new tidbits with every reading, perpetually, at least if it’s a good poem). In stage three, you question what you just dug up, and you dig more. You keep digging. You keep doing the thing—picking out words, picking out sounds and emphases, picking out themes and images. You might realize that while your second stage reading understood more than your first stage reading, you got a lot of it wrong in your excitement. You may have misread lines—or you may realize that the whole time, the poem was actually pretty sarcastic, and if you look at the images the poem uses to convey hope, they’re not actually very hopeful, they just seem that way to an undiscerning eye. 

Always write when you are analyzing, if only in the margin. I do some or all of the following: circle or highlight similar sound clusters and rhymes, scan the meter, circle the same word where it pops up multiple times, write a theme word next to each stanza as summary where applicable, etc. Even better, write out your thoughts in a notebook as you are working through the poem, or going over it in your second stage anyway. In the Thomas Wyatt analysis I'll be posting, my first analysis and my second were almost opposites, and my notebook stream-of-conscious provided a valuable record of how differently the poem could be read, yielding double interpretation gainz.