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- Read a poem slowly. Prose writing such as novels, essays, and so forth are like a gentle glass of iced tea. We consume it as fast as we want, depending on our thirst for it. A poem is whiskey. It’s not tea; so don’t consume it like tea. It’s strong. Sip accordingly.
I suggest reading a poem at something like 1/3rd the speed you would read a paragraph. Remember that a poem is not not written to convey information at a casual pace. The words of a poem are chosen carefully and assembled to make an impact, word by word. A reader need to be conscious of the words themselves.
Most first-time whiskey drinkers say the same thing as first-time poetry readers: “I don’t like it.” My suggestion to both: try it again, much more slowly next time.
- A poem is more like an image, and less like a movie. When I write a poem I’m keeping it short, so as not to bore you.But that means a poem has no space for building up various characters, letting them interact, building a plot which evolves over time, a dramatic climax and resolution to the plot, etc. Again, a writer can do all that stuff in a novel or a screenplay. But a poem is not a novel. A poem is just an image; it would take thousands of such images pieced together to create even a short film.
Consume a poem as you would look at a painting in a museum. You take it in by stopping to consider it. If it bores you, you move on. If it’s interesting you may look at it several times and think harder about it. But you don’t look for a beginning, middle, and end; you don’t work out the plot or try to guess the ending. It doesn’t work that way.
- The ‘point’ of a poem may become clear or may remain unclear; and that should be your expectation going in. Here the parallels between images and poems works well again:
Some images or paintings have a widely accessible ‘point’ that everyone sees in a similar way. Think of that famous image of the soldier collapsed into barbed wire during WWI, or the little girl running from napalm in Vietnam. When we view these images, each of us sees the horrors of war. For those images, we ‘get the point.’
But other images are open to our interpretation; and don’t “mean” anything specific. The Mona Lisa infatuates people …. But why? What is “the point” of the Mona Lisa? Or of Van Gogh’s Starry Night? Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston? The Scream? What do these “mean”?; what is “the point” of these images? Many are just stirring, evocative images that make us think, that bring ideas into our minds. That is all; and that is enough They don’t have a ‘point.’
Similarly for a poem: a poem may be saying something very directly; or it may be creating an image for you to reflect on, without any wider lesson or meaning.
- A little mystery is a good thing. If you read a poem and it makes some sense; and yet you feel there is something you missed, try not to be frustrated. Part of the fun of poems is to leave a bit of mystery within them.
