10 Ways to Read a Poem

1. Get comfy and enjoy your first reading. Relax into the experience without trying to analyze anything.

2. Read the poem again, this time aloud. Listen for the musicality. Feel the rhythm.

3. As you read aloud, notice the sound echoes, images, or other poetic devices that make the poem unique.

4. Now analyze. Ask what grabbed your interest and why.

5. If the poem included words or literary references with which you’re not familiar, look up each in a dictionary or on the Internet. Analyze: How or why does a particular word or reference enhance the poem?

6. Ask more questions, such as why an image works – or not!

7. Does the poem follow a pattern or form? If so, is it effective?

8. Consider the connotations for unusual choices of words. Do the implied meanings add layers of meaning to the poem? If so, how? For instance, a word that suggests more than one meaning can add a sense of mystery – or confusion!

9. Whatever the overall effect, is it effective? Does each aspect of the poem work well – or not? If not, what would you change and why?

10. As a poem reveals itself to you, you begin to own the experience. And, as you notice or consider each poetic aspect, those techniques become available to you too. You now own the choices that went into the making of this poem – choices that you, too, have the option to use as you revise your poems for others to read, analyze, and enjoy.


© 2015, Mary Harwell Sayler has several books of poetry available on Amazon.
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New Year's Resolution: make new friends with poetry

Few of us enjoy poems we don’t “get,” but often, the problem isn’t with the poem so much as our approach to poetry. Maybe this seems obvious, but poems are not nonfiction books ready for one-time reading. Nor are they newspapers built on a pyramid of who/ what/ when/ where/ how and sometimes why.

Poems are meant to be read and re-read and….

Poems worth getting to know may be shy, seldom revealing themselves to passersby or quick acquaintances.

Poems want to be known for who they are, not necessarily why or how, but for the experience they bring.

Poems are adventures, waiting to happen.

Poems are playground experiments with words.

Poems are thoughts and feelings or stories scored with musicality.

Poems may analyze your deepest self but do not need you to analyze them!

Poems are meant to be enjoyed slowly – like good wine, good music, or good company.

As happens with new friends, each new meeting of a poem brings a new discovery. This might be an image that begins to clear or an insight you hadn’t considered or a sound that rings a chord in you.

May your New Year ring with enjoyment – the joy meant to occur in a renewed or newfound love of poetry.

Have a blessed and happy 2013!

© 2012, Mary Harwell Sayler

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