Ruth Miller

Poetry and Religion

When poetry and religion meet, the poet contemplates the spirit, the soul, death, fate, purpose, meaning—that is, one or another of the issues we have seen raised in philosophical terms in the previous chapter—but brings to the interpretation of these issues some system that derives from church doctrine or some conception of God or divine principle of human destiny.

Figurative Language and Imagery

When you hear such things as “He’s all thumbs,” “I’m at the end of my rope,” “She doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain,” you know that the speaker isn’t talking about thumbs, rope, or rain. Something else is intended: he’s graceless; I’m desperate; she’s dull. The speaker is using figurative language, that is, a means of indirect statement that says one thing in terms of another. The effectiveness of such usage can, of course, vary widely. It can seem tedious and uninteresting if the particular expression has too often been used; or it can seem foolish if it is simply showy or not especially appropriate. But as often as not the effect can be a liveliness of expression that manages to press very closely to the essence of an object or idea while also conveying a strong sense of the speaker’s attitudes and feelings. For the poet, whose tendency is to see and think figuratively, the use of figurative language is virtually inescapable.

Poetry and Biography

When we read a poem by, let us say, John Milton or Emily Dickinson or William Wordsworth, we know there is a person behind the words, a poet whose experiences in life contributed to the choice of subject matter, the imagery, the attitude, or other aspects of the poem. Although we can never know precisely how the poet’s experiences come together to inform a poem, some biographical knowledge may often be helpful, and occasionally crucial, to our understanding of the poem.

Tone and Attitude

We have occasionally used the words “tone” and “attitude” in commenting on the effect of particular poems, and though we have not formally defined these terms, their meanings in general were probably easy enough to grasp from the context of the discussion. But tone and attitude are sufficiently important to the understanding of poetry to merit more detailed consideration.

Writing About Poetry

This book has been devoted to the acts of reading, understanding, and, we hope, enjoying poetry. In this section, we offer a few suggestions about a related process, writing about poems; that is, putting on paper—refining and giving shape to—your responses and perceptions.

Rhyme, Rhythm, and Stanza

The very best way to read a poem is to read it aloud, for although poems usually come to us as a visual experience, as words locked into the printed page, they are intended to be heard as well as seen. An attentiveness to the sounds and patterns of sound is essential to the full appreciation of most poems. For example, the rhythm and other sound patterns may contribute to a sense of dignity and stateliness, as in the opening lines of John Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”: This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heaven’s Eternal King, Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That he our deadly forfeit should release, And with his Father work us a perpetual peace. The sounds of another poem may approach those of ordinary conversation, as in the opening lines of W. H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen”: He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint.

Some Groupings of Poems for Comparison

The listings of poems that follow make no pretense to completeness. They are offered, rather, as a guide to some of the connections—thematic or formal—that can be made among the poems included in this volume.

Words and Word Order

Robert Penn Warren has whimsically defined a poem as a group of lines that are printed evenly along the left-hand margin of a page. After that, he says, you’re on your own. Robert Frost said, “Poetry is the kind of things poets write.” Both are telling us that poetry is so varied in its potential that no definition, not even by a poet, is likely to be adequate.

Some Impulses to Poetry

People have always found ways to involve poetry in their lives, in their ordinary as well as their more exalted affairs. In this first chapter, as we briefly consider a few of these occasions, we may begin to have a sense of how wide-ranging and how various the impulse to poetic expression is. At the same time, we begin to see, in very different poems, certain features that poems seem to have in common: freshness of perception, economy of language, striking images, pleasing rhythms, and more.

Speaker, Setting, Subject, and Theme

It is always important in reading a poem to consider who is talking. Even though the word “I” is used in the poem, the poet may not be the speaker. The voice, whatever its origin—whether real or imagined, personal or impersonal—has an important function in a poem, for it is the owner of that voice to whom things happen, who feels an emotion or has a reflection to share; it is that speaker through whose eyes or from whose point of view a sequence of events or a series of details is presented.