5-L. Special problems in analyzing poetry (though most of these also apply to all analytical reading of any written material)

A. Overview of Reading Comprehension Problems

B. Scansion (Determining Rhythm and Meter)

A1a. An Overview of Problems in Reading Comprehension Generally and with Reference to Poetry

Problems in reading poetry, and indeed in all reading, are almost always traceable to one of three sources, with a small number of problems occasionally deriving from an error unique to poetry:

A1. The meanings of words and allusions (general reading problem)

A2. Problems in grammar (general reading problem)

A3. Elucidation of figurative language (general reading problem)

A1. Words and allusions: a lexical problem--that is, not knowing the meanings of some words, either because they are drawn from more highly literate reading, or because common words are being used in an usual or archaic sense. Consult a good collegiate dictionary, or an unabridged dictionary. For example, in Billy Collins' "Schoolsville" (Ch. 13, R&J), the meanings of alderman, haberdashery, Hawthorne (and The Scarlet Letter), lute, Yeats, and reprimanding must all be known. For allusions to people, places, history, literature, etc., as in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Yeats, there is a historical or literary reference that the reader is assumed to recognize: consult a collegiate dictionary first, then a general encyclopedia , or Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, or Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. Once a literary writer's nationality is discovered (as it usually can be by reference to a collegiate dictionary), reference books specialized for certain national literatures, such as the Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford Companion to American Literature, Oxford Companion to French Literature, and so on, can be consulted for material about an author or a synopsis of the author's important literary works. (If you don't have easy access to an encyclopedia on CD-Rom such as Encarta, Compton's Interactive, or Encyclopedia Britannica, or if you don't have easy access to a good multi-volume hardcover encyclopedia such as the Britannica, Funk and Wagnalls, or Groliers', this addition to every college-educated person's library is enabled through some hardcover inexpensive one-volume encyclopedias that are available on the sale tables at large local bookstores, and a one-volume paperback, The New American Desk Encyclopedia, from Signet Books, which is a best buy.)

        An example of how a common word may be used for an unusual or archaic sense is the word small as it is used in "Western Wind," the first poem given in Ch. 15 of R&J: "Western Wind, when wilt thou blow,/ The small rain down can rain?" (lines 1-2). In twentieth century English, the expressions "light rain," "gentle rain," or "small amount of rain" would be used, rather than "small rain." So the question then becomes what small means in the phrase "small rain," in the opening lines of "Western Wind."

A2. Grammar

A2a. Structure of a clause or sentence: In the last line of stanza 8 of the ballad "Sir Patrick Spens" (Ch. 13, R&J), does the last line mean that the Scots Nobles swam above their hats (on the surface of the water, while the hats sank to the ocean bottom), or that the hats swam above the Scots Nobles (on the surface of the water, while the nobles sank to the ocean bottom)? This problem in reading comprehension can occur in any reading matter, including poetry, which sets up a clause as follows:

When two more nouns or noun-substitutes (N) precede the verb (V), a problem may arise in determining which noun is the subject of the clause and which noun is the direct object (or predicate noun). Thus the problem in the line from "Sir Patrick Spens" is as follows:

                                                                                                               N₁   +   N₂    + V

It turns out, both in logic and with reference to the concluding three stanzas of the poem, that the meaning of the line is that the hats swam above the Scots nobles.

A2b. reference or antecedents of pronouns: In the preceding example from "Sir Patrick Spens" ("Their hats they swam aboon"), the pronoun they is troublesome, and pronoun reference can always derail reading, whether in poetry or any other kind of reading material. The problem is determining what word the pronoun refers to, or what, in grammar is termed "the antecedent" of the pronoun (review this matter in your composition handbook).

A2c. words elliptically omitted: Ellipsis and parallelism (which should be looked up in your composition handbook) appear in the problem of what pronoun goes in the blank of the following sentence: "My girlfriend is smarter than _____ (I, me)." Because than is a particular kind of conjunction, it must join two clauses: (a) girlfriend (subject), (b) is (linking verb), (c) smarter (predicate adjective); (d) than (conjunction), (a1) I (subject), [(b1) am (linking verb), (c1) smart (predicate adjective)]. This problem of elliptical grammatical constructions occurs in the first two lines of the poem "Western Wind" (first poem in Ch. 15 of R&J): "Western wind, when wilt thou blow?/ The small rain down can rain?" (lines 1-2). These lines are likely to be troublesome to apprentice literary analysts because of word meaning ("small," as noted in section 1 of this pamphlet, above) and the grammatical and logical connection between the two lines. Since there is a grammatical and logical connection, we eventually infer or deduce that the conjunction indicating this logical connection is elliptically implied; that the speaker hopes for "small" (that is, gentle) rain as a result of a western wind blowing; and that the lines thus have the following grammatical structure: "Western wind, when wilt thou blow,/ [So] the small rain down can rain?"

The conjunction (relative pronoun) who is elliptically omitted, more than once, in "Sir Patrick Spens": "Up and spoke an eldern knight/ Sat at the king's right knee" (lines 5-6); "And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,/ Was walking on the sand"(lines 11-12). Like word meaning and allusion problems, as outlined in section 1, above, grammatical problems can lead to vaguely uneasy feelings of or actual incomprehension of reading material, including poetry.

A2d. Sing-Song oral or silent reading (special to poetry)

Finally, poetry does have one unique problem, differentiating it from other reading material. All readers should be careful not to slide (electric or otherwise) into reading a poem with such a sing-song emphasis that all they hear aloud or in their minds is "ta TA ta TA ta TA ta TA ta TA," which no one will be able to figure out the meaning of. Don't read Thomas Hardy's "The Man He Killed" (Ch. 13 of R&J) as follows:

            Had HE and I but MET

            By SOME old ANCIENT inn,

            We SHOULD have SAT us DOWN to WET

            Right MANY a NIPPERkin . . . (lines 1-4)

When a poem is read this way, soon the grammar and word meanings will be obscured by hearing in your mind not the prose sense of the lines but just the percussive dance beat of "ta TA ta TA ta TA," etc. The booming of the bass drum in a dance beat (sometimes all that can be heard from a distant stereo) is fine to dance to, but not very productive to try to analyze the meaning of.

Apprentice literary analysts should also not pause at the ends of lines with no marks of punctuation (technically, as explained in Ch. 19 of R&J, such lines are called "run-on" or "enjambed" lines). A student who pauses at the end of 1 or the end of line 3 of Hardy's "The Man He Killed" will be more likely to not understand the simple prose sentence and grammar of lines 1-4, which is "we would have sat down together to have drinks." In other words, the two fellows would "Wet" (drink) what? They would "wet" (drink) several glasses together.

A3a. Elucidation of figurative language: When figurative language is used, in any kind of reading material, including poetry, the reader may have to ascertain: (a) what the figure of speech means (e.g., what in the world do the first two lines of Randal Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" [Ch. 13 of R&J] mean?), or (b) the tenor (explained in chapter 17 of R&J), the literal meaning of a figure of speech (e.g., when the sailors tell Sir Patrick Spens, in stanza 7 of that poem "Late late yestere'en I saw the new moon/ With the old moon in her arm" [lines 25-26], what do they mean that they literally saw?). A figure of speech is divided into two parts (see Ch. 17 of R&J): tenor (literal part, what's being spoken about) and vehicle (comparison part, what the subject is being compared to).

When Randall Jarrell's speaker in "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" says "From my mother's sleep I fell into the State" (line 1), he uses figurative language in both "sleep" and "fell." We infer or deduce that the mother's sleep referred to, in the process of birth, would be the anesthetic in the operating room (possibly the sleepy, lulling existence both the mother and speaker had in the speaker's early childhood), while the speaker's falling into the State, suggests the helpless feeling of an infant in the first seconds of its life (possibly the helpless feeling of a youngster being drafted and taken away from the sleepy idyll of his earlier happy childhood with his mother and subjected to the new rigors of military life). The speaker's falling also initiates animal imagery (animals, like cows and horses, are said to drop their young), which with vertical imagery (up-down) and the imagery of sleep/dream/nightmare vs. wakefulness/reality, continues throughout the poem and interconnects many of its details and lines. An ultimate theme conveyed is that war and social systems geared to it dehumanize the young, moving from animal-herding to, finally, inanimate remains in death.

When the sailors complain to Sir Patrick Spens in "Sir Patrick Spens" that they don't want to sail because "Late late yestere'en I saw the new moon/ With the old moon in her arm" (lines 25-26), we eventually infer or deduce that the tenor of their figurative language is the crescent moon: the bright sliver (new moon) is wrapped up with the rest of the dark sphere (old moon) so closely, it's as if these are two friends or lovers with arms interlinked or in an embrace. So what the sailors saw last night was the crescent moon, one of the bad signs for taking a sea voyage at this time. Furthermore, the vehicle part of this figurative language--a pair of friends or lovers with arms interlinked or in an embrace--implies the idea of love, or of love and hate, which is a crucial concept that runs throughout the entire poem. How are love and hate manifested in virtually every stanza and every line of "Sir Patrick Spens"?

A3b. The three-step process in elucidating figurative language (see Ch. 17 of R&J): The elucidation of figurative language is a three-step process: (a) division of the figure of speech into the tenor* (what is being spoken about) and vehicle* (what it is compared to); (b) contemplation about how the vehicle in some way physically applies to or resembles the tenor; (c) further contemplation about the implications of the vehicle and the asserted resemblance of the vehicle to the tenor. (See chapter 17 in R&J on tenor and vehicle.) Figures of speech may have one of four forms, depending on whether the tenor (abbreviated T in the diagrams below) is explicit or implicit, and whether the vehicle (abbreviated V in diagrams below) is explicit or implicit:

First form:  T = V  -  Both tenor and vehicle explicit

Example from Robert Burns' "A Red, Red Rose" (Ch. 17 of R&J):

            " O my Luve's like a red, red, rose"

                          ¦ ¦                          ¦ ¦

                      tenor                     vehicle

Second form:  T =  (V)  -  Tenor explicit; vehicle implicit

Example from Robert Frost's poem "Bereft" (speaking about the effects of wind):

            Out in the porch's sagging floor
            Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
            Blindly struck at my knee and missed. (lines 8-10)

(The explicit tenor is leaves; the implicit vehicle is snake.)

Third form:  (T) =  V  -  Tenor implicit; vehicle explicit

Example from Keats' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer":

            "Much <have I travell'd> in <the realms of gold>"

                                 ||                              ¦ ¦

                           vehicle                        vehicle

            (The implicit tenors are have read and literary works.)

Fourth form:  (T)  =  (V)  Both tenor and vehicle implicit

Example from Emily Dickinson's "It Sifts from Leaden Sieves":

            It sifts from leaden sieves,
            It powders all the wood. (lines 1-2)

            (The implicit tenor is snow; the implicit vehicle is flour.)
 

Summarizing the four divisions of figures of speech:

First form: T = V

Second form: T = (V)

Third form: (T) = V

Fourth form: (T) = (V)
 

Finally, figures of speech may be simple -- T = V; (T) = V; T = (V); (T) = (V) -- or compound (the tenor and vehicle have more than one part; each part may have explicit or implicit elements):
 

                    T₁                       V₁
                ------        =        --------            (compound figure; all elements explicit)
                    T_{2                      V2}
 
 
                     ( T₁ )                                    V_{1
                    -------------        =            -----------            (compound figure; two elements explicit; two elements implicit)}
                      T₂                                    ( V₂ )
 
 

An example of the more complicated compound figure of speech diagrammed to the right, with implicit elements on both the tenor and vehicle sides, occurs in the Romantic poem by Robert Burns "The Red, Red Rose" (Ch. 17 of R&J): "While the sands o' life shall run" (line 12).
 

             (T_{1 )}                                 V1  (= sands)
            --------                 =         --------
             T₂  (= life )                        V₂
 
 

Our job with this compound figure of speech with some implicit components is to ascertain what the numerator is on the tenor side, and what the denominator is on the vehicle side. We realize that the line is saying that something is to life as sands (i.e., grains of sand) are to something. We then ask what is to life, as sands are to what? (There is a resemblance here to analogies questions on tests like the SAT.)

B. A Four-Step Process for Poetry Scansion

1. Find any two-syllable (or above) words, and then determine from ordinary pronunciation, the stressed or unstressed syllables. If you are unsure, check the pronunciation guide in a collegiate (or unabridged) dictionary, which will indicate stressed and unstressed syllables.

2. Next, find any function-word (articles, prepositions, conjunctions) and content-word (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives) combinations. Almost always in these combinations, function words are unstressed (because they carry no real content) while content words are stressed.

3. Finally, for the remaining un-scanned syllables, determine the relative stress of syllables. That is, for the as-yet unscanned syllable, determine whether it receives less stress (which would be scanned as unstressed) than the immediately-preceding or immediately-following syllable, or more stress (which would be scanned as stressed) than the immediately-preceding or immediately-following syllable.

4. Lastly, ask how rhythmical or metrical effects help depict any of the poem's subjects or convey any of the poem's meanings.
 
 
N&Q on Billy Collins' Poem "Schoolsville"

1. (a) How does the poem divide into the following three main parts: stanzas 1-2, 3-6, and 7-8? (b) How does what the two main components are of "school" help reveal how the poem is organized or structured into the three parts?

2. (a) How does the principle of comparison and contrast, or of alternation, help structure or organize the poem? (b) How are the two principal parts or components of a school compared or contrasted? (c) How is one of the principal components of school itself subdivided into contrasting units in stanza 3 and in stanza 4? (d) How, exactly, do the actions of the two students described in stanza 4 when in school characterize the students? (e) How are the actions of the A students appropriate to them, whereas the action of the D students appropriate to them (stanza 5)? (f) What jokes about creative writing students and the format of creative writing classes are made in stanza 6? Why do the creative writing students pick the particular spot in town that they pick for their circle? (g) How do the kinds of questions asked by students, as formulated in stanza 8, constitute a contrast? (Look up the notes on Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" [R&J7 pp. 913-914] to see why a student might have a question about some of Yeats's poetry.)

3. (a) How does the allusion to Hawthorne in stanza 5 help suggest, together with the simile of "like a machine" (in stanza 4) that the young woman is not really at leisure, though she might seem so at first? (b) How does the kind of house the speaker lives in (stanza 7) connect backwards to the allusion to Hawthorne (stanza 5)?

4. (a) Why is the seasonal setting of the poem appropriate not only to the long analogy about school but also to the speaker's present situation or circumstances? (b) Who is the speaker of the poem, exactly, and what particular details of the poem reveal this identity inferentially? (c) How do the location of and kind of house of the speaker symbolize his position in school - in "schoolsville"?

5. What jokes - with underlying truths -- about students are made in the poem? What jokes - with underlying truths - about teachers are made in the poem?
 

N&Q on Lisel Mueller's Poem "Hope"

1. How does the poem divide into two main parts by virtue not only of stanza form but also of the grammar of the first lines of each of the four stanzas?

2.Why does the poet repeatedly use the indefinite pronoun it instead of the "referent" -- i.e., "hope"?

3. With regard to the poem's organization or structure, what images connect various stanzas? With regard to the poem's organization or structure, how is there some sort of sequence or progression from the first through fourth stanzas?
 

N&Q on Robert Herrick's Poem "Here a Pretty Baby Lies"

1. Herrick's poem "Here a Pretty Baby Lies" brings up the issue of rhythm and meter in poetry. How do the short lines, rhymed couplets, and use of trochaic rhythm (look trochaic meter in Ch. 19 of R&J) help convey what two genres or categories the poem belongs to (one of them named in the second line, the other one implied)?

2. How are the short lines and simple word choice appropriate to the subject of the poem?

3. What elements divide the poem into the two parts of lines 1-2 and 3-4, respectively?