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1     "LOOKING INTO" SOME SHORT POEMS

 

 

The easiest way to start looking at how “close reading” works is by looking at some very short poems. Poetry by its very nature usually demonstrates language which is concentrated, highly organized and often packing a punch well above its weight. There is often some difficulty to be encountered because poetry can be deeply personal; it can be suggestive more than stated; it can conceal as much as reveal. In short, poetry touches on all those things which make us human and curious about other human experience.

 

Part of the difficulty is that it is often hard to get on to other people's wave lengths. Different ages, cultures, and societies cause poetry to be sometimes difficult to comprehend, which is why close reading depends on the same skills that make a good detective: alertness in observation; ability to piece together clues; and sympathy or empathy with others. We need to sharpen our curiosity about people and the world about us, and poetry particularly helps us in this.

 

Above all, perhaps, poetry is an art form and a game, played by rules (though these may be deliberately broken). It makes demands on our attention, whilst often deliberately ignoring some of our (the reader’s) implicit needs (the need to know who? what? why?). The following poem works with pupils of almost any age at secondary level. It's a great way to start.

 

A

 

The Balloon of the Mind

 

Hands, do what you’re bid; 

Bring the balloon of the mind,       

That bellies and drags in the wind, 

Into its narrow shed.

by WB Yeats

 

Discussion can start with what we think and feel about “balloons”. Positive? Negative? Why might the “mind” be like a “balloon”?

 

The word “bellies” may be a problem: it is clearly a verb, and while we know what our “belly” is we might not have thought about turning the noun into a verb. More than what it might mean, what does it suggest?

 

More questions, but these don’t have to come from the teacher. How do we feel about “shed(s)”?  Why would you want to put a balloon into a shed? What about big “montgolfier” type balloons? Is a “narrow” shed positive or negative. Does it protect or does it restrict? The answer might be that it may do both. Is the wind a threat? Why? Which of the words “bellies” and “drags” are the more negative or more positive?

 

More importantly, perhaps, why would the writer address his hands?

 

It’s at this point that some pupils may make a breakthrough and see a connection between the writer’s hands, writing a poem within a “narrow” stanza, and the need for poetry, or writing more generally, to set limits for, and “discipline”, the balloon-like imagination.

 

“Oh, so it’s all about POETRY!”

 

Further discussion might also consider the use of half-rhymes or near-rhymes, again, perhaps suggesting the waywardness of the unruly imagination which needs to be sheltered, housed, restrained – even, perhaps, restricted. The stanza corresponds to a ballad, one of the simplest and most basic “patterns” in poetry. Here, the basic metre, which is by no means regular, is based on four trimeters. The rhythm might suggest the waywardness and unruliness of a balloon which can be controlled only with some difficulty.

 

It’s a gem of a poem, about poems and about writing poetry; as such, it makes an excellent start to our thinking about poetry and how to read it “closely”. NB Classes should all learn it off by heart! It's very easy to learn and it's a good feeling – to possess a work of art. After all, how many original works of art by a major artist do YOU own?

B

That Love is all there is   

 

That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.

by Emily Dickinson

 

This apparently simple little poem suddenly turns difficult in the second half, that is, the last two lines of this four-lined poem. Two words particularly create this difficulty: “freight” and “groove”.

 

Why should “freight” be “proportioned” to the “groove”? Freight suggests a cargo or a load. The period this poem was written at, the 1860s in the USA suggests a possible context for “groove” – a word whose origin will be obscure for pupils nowadays. However, the hip word “groove” or “groovy”, which they might know, comes from the groove of a vinyl record, along which the stylus or needle runs. It may now  take a bit of a mental leap to connect up the idea of a groove along which an industrial age wheel might run in order to carry a very heavy load – something like a locomotive hauling freight along not rails, but their counterparts: grooves.

 

What does this tell us about “Love”? Only the surprise: that for this poem, “love” is revealed as not light, happy, a source of joy and sweetness; on the contrary, this short poem drily insists on the unbearable weight of love. It can only be borne, apparently, if the weight is evenly distributed or “proportioned”.  How do we then read the words “It is enough”? Resignation? The comma after “enough” is just sufficient pause to make the assertion more ambiguous than it would have been had the comma been missed out, which would then lead to a clear suggestion that it is “enough” (i.e. all right) – if- “the freight should be Proportioned to the groove”.

 

We are then thrown back to the rather bland and simplistic  “truth” which is being asserted at the beginning: that all we know of “Love” is that it exists. How positive a declaration can we feel this to be in retrospect, when what follows complicates the issue so much and so poignantly?

 

The form of the poem follows a typical ballad structure, here with a 3343 rhythmic structure (three iambic trimeters interspersed with one iambic tetrameter). It reminds us of hymns and nursery jingles – a structure that suggests simplicity and plain speaking. A structure which here is carefully undermined by the sudden and deliberate complication of the final two lines.

 

C

 

UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES.   c.1648

 

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes.

 

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see

That brave vibration each way free;

O how that glittering taketh me !

 by Robert Herrick   [1591-1674]. 

 

This short poem published in 1648 works best with pupils aged 15 and above. Discussion might start, before the poem is shown, with the importance of clothes generally (in all ages and cultures) as protection, attraction, signs of individuality or signs of conformity: in other words clothing as sending out signals. Discussion on male and female fashion can really take off (no pun intended!), so after a bit, ask the class to consider this poem, explaining that it was produced in 1648, in other words a long time ago, when clothing fashions were very different.

 

Looking at the poem closely, we notice a difficulty with the very first word. “Whenas”, though not difficult to understand, nevertheless signals the fact that this poem may be somewhat old fashioned or archaic. We need to think about the connotation of “silks” also; and we might just notice that strong possessive pronoun “my”. This “my” is later followed by “mine” and the last word of the poem just happens to be “me”. What can we glean from this?

 

Two words seem to stand out in each stanza: “liquefaction” in the first and “vibration” in the second. These are heavy, almost self-consciously Latinate words. How should we, how do we respond to them? Why “brave”? Did “brave” then mean “courageous” or did it have another sense of “brave” as in “bold” or even “brazen” – as in “braving it out”? How do we feel about “glittering”? Is it an entirely positive word? And how should we read that last verb “taketh”? When a man “takes” a woman (or vice versa?)

 

The form of the poem seems to emphasise the dualities it portrays, male/female, taker/taken, freedom/confinement, viewer/viewed. The rhymes, too, serve to accentuate words as well as to supply a smooth harmony to the visual and textural experience, which seems to be so pleasurable and so integral a part of the experience of the poem.

 

What is our conclusion? What does the poem find important? How far are we persuaded? If this IS a love poem, what sort of love is being considered? Are girls' reactions different from boys' reactions? The questions it throws up are endless and fascinating.

 

D

 

 

The Sick Rose

 

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

 

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

by William Blake

 

In this famous and deeply ambiguous poem, it is worth giving a bit more of the background. The poem forms part of a collection of poems called “Songs of Experience”, ostensibly for children, printed in 1793, and a follow-up to his previous collection – “Songs of Innocence” which had been printed in 1789. William Blake was a Londoner and an artist/illustrator by trade. Both collections of poems were illustrated, engraved and printed by Blake himself.

 

Discussion will probably start with ideas of what a “rose” has traditionally symbolized. In the eighteenth century, the word “worm” could signify both a wriggly earthworm or also a monster. If we are considering words closely, we should be aware that in French, for example, the words for flower-bed and bed are separate (“platebande” and “lit”); here, however, the word “bed” may have subversive implications. The two words “crimson joy” are also not “innocent”. What might be the implications of such a juxtaposition? And how, finally, should we read the phrase “dark, secret love”? What sort of “love” is so destructive? We are already, it seems to me, in the area of “abuse” – a very contemporary preoccupation and one about which Blake seems to have been only too aware in so many of the “Songs of Experience” (see, for example, his poem “London”, with its strong hints of child prostitution).

 

It is at this stage that we might realize how a close reading of a short and seemingly uncomplicated poem (what it says is not hard to understand linguistically) reveals layers of complexity and ambiguity. The terrible discovery in the poem may well be the level of complicity between the abuser and the victim. The sickness points us towards a moral sickness in society at large, perhaps, and not simply, as we might have thought, a mere physical sickness. Needless to say, if this poem is being discussed with younger pupils, there needs to be considerable care and sensitivity in directing the discussion. 

 

E

Liu Ch'e 

 

The rustling of the silk is discontinued,

Dust drifts over the court-yard,

There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves

Scurry into heaps and lie still,

And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them:

 

A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.

 

by Ezra Pound

 

Ezra Pound was a major influence in London, at the beginning of the twentieth century, helping to  shape what has come to be known as “modernism” – a movement which wanted to break with the past and explore new styles, new modes of writing, painting and self-expression, new technologies and new ideas (such as Freudianism, fascism, internationalism and so on). Fascinated also by Chinese poetry, he was much taken with the idea of concentrated images (see also his haiku  In a Station of the Metro). He once wrote that an “image is an emotional complex”. In this poem we are offered sharp “images” like “Dust” and “silk” and “leaves”. The title also suggests an eastern and exotically unfamiliar world.

 

The organisation of the poem doesn’t reveal any particular structure, either of line length, metre or rhyme scheme. However, we do note the forced separation of the final line. It’s a line with no “finite” verb. “Clings” is part of a subordinate clause, but there is no man clause as such. Elsewhere in the preceding lines, we are given plenty of finite verbs in the present tense.

 

What does a close reading, then, reveal? What connotations are there to “rustling of the silks”? Positive or negative? Why “discontinued”? How does the word “Dust” sound when juxtaposed with “court-yard”? What are we supposed to understand from the penultimate line? And, perhaps the poem’s ultimate tease, who is being referred to possibly in the last line? What does “wet leaf” suggest? Does the word “threshold” carry any further significance other than that it may simply refer to the door-step or door of this house (or mansion or even palace)? The poem conceals more than it reveals, deliberately, perhaps, but a close reading will nevertheless allow the reader to engage imaginatively with an intriguing “snapshot” of glamorous decay and poignancy linked,  perhaps, to oriental empires.

 

F

 

She Tells Her Love

 

She tells her love while half asleep,

       In the dark hours,

               With half-words whispered low:

As Earth stirs in her winter sleep

       And puts out grass and flowers

                Despite the snow,

                Despite the falling snow.

 

by Robert Graves

 

In this poem, the shaping of the poem draws attention to itself straight away. We notice the parallel structure of the lines and the heavy insistence caused by the last line, which breaks the pattern and repeats the words “Despite” and “snow”. The rhymes create a lulling sound and insist again on harmonious parallels and correspondences to be found. 

 

How should we read the word “tells”? Is “she” telling of  her “love”, or is she telling something to her “love” or lover? “Tells” could also refer to the act of counting out something. Is this applicable? Is “dark hours” positive or negative? How do we read “As”? Does it here mean “while” or does it mean “just like – or just as”?

 

This poem, too, works with strong images. How do we respond as readers to their progression and application? Is the Earth being described as a woman, or is a woman being described in terms of the Earth? Or both?

G

A slumber did my spirit seal

 

A slumber did my spirit seal;           

  I had no human fears:         

She seem'd a thing that could not feel          

  The touch of earthly years.

           

No motion has she now, no force;             

  She neither hears nor sees;  

Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course           

  With rocks, and stones, and trees.

                                                     

by William Wordsworth

 

 This is a famously mysterious poem, one of a series which Wordsworth wrote about somebody, whether fictional or real is not clear, whom he calls “Lucy” elsewhere in the sequence. The two stanzas seem to reflect on the impact “Lucy’s” death has had on the writer. The poem appears to end positively, with the reflection that now Lucy is part of nature. The last word “trees” seems to suggest new life emerging.

 

The difficulties begin when we start to read very closely. We notice, particularly, I think, that all the finite verbs (those which are conjugated) in the first stanza are in the past tense and all the verbs in the second stanza are in the present. The poem generally presents us with a succession of negatives (“No”, “not”, “no”, “neither”, “nor”…). The first line is hard to understand. Why is the poet inclined to fall into a “slumber” as a reaction? “Seal” suggests a confined, even claustrophobic state (a premonition of Lucy’s coffin?). Does “no earthly fears” suggest “fear” or “no fear”? What are the implications of Lucy being referred to as “seemed a thing…”? How far is Lucy’s state of passivity in the final stanza a source of comfort or anxiety? How reassuring, in other words, is it to be “Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course”? And that word, “diurnal”, - heavily Latinate, three syllables, the longest word in the poem – how is that word to be understood?

 

How, finally, does the poet seem to measure his feelings in reaction to this disappearance? How much of a distance does the poem put between him and the girl or woman? Who is felt to be more important in the poem, the writer or Lucy? How ambiguous is the reassurance that the poem seems to strive for? The answers to these and other questions can only be tracked down by considering all the variables in the poem: the words, their sounds, meanings, connotations, arrangements and nuances.

It is in the search for an evercloser reading that answers of sorts may emerge, but in the end, we would have to say, there may be no final and definitive reading of this poem.

 

 

Close readings, then, need to address not just what the poems seem to be “telling “ us, but they also need to look "into" them and listen hard to the sounds of the words, considering their choice and their arrangement  syntactically and visually on the page. The readings need to assess, as well, all the little clues (like the title, or key words and images) left by writers as they construct a final poetic artifact, which is linked to some experience or idea the poems have wished to explore in their own idiosyncratic way.

Only picture I could find! Did he really look lie this? Did Julia go for the moustache or the haircut?

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