From: Thorne, Sara. 2006. Mastering Poetry.Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.

' '.y< ' '·.•· •.·. . i > ''.ii. • •·t;! .•¡'2f.1 IXTRACT 13 - J. s. MILL (1806-73), English philosopher, economist, reformer and
Wh'* d~w,le~fll ~.~'I~ ~~.f""~f~~inQ s~¡lte~~t,1, 1~,,· .·i~i po 1iti cian
Do y~ ~re' or ~sa(lrtlHV~th ~~e ~iffilrent~•!'ts' ': · •·•· '';~:'
'Poetry is feeling, confessing itself to itself in moments of solitude.'
of Vier-' e&>r•sse(.f? i ·• ':
1XrRACT14 -ANNE STEVENSON (1933-), English poet and biographer
' ... rhythm [is] the unconscious engine of poetry, the pulse or muscle that governs
EXTRACT 1 - ROBERT FROST (1874-1963), American lyric poet it and has its physical source in walking, breathing and heartbeat.'
'Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.' l'..'\TRACT 15 - JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832), English writer and philosopher
EXTRACT 2 - HORACE (65-8sc), Roman lyric poet and satirist 'Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when sorne of
'Poetry is like painting.' them fall short of it.'
l•XTRACT 16 - SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-86), English poet and patron
EXTRACT 3 - SUSAN WICKS (1947-), English poet and novelist
'Poetry is a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight.'
'The poet's first and most important tool is syntax: the challenge is to make it do
what you want it to invisibly ... ' l•X IMCT 17 - MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-88), English poet and critic
EXTRACT 4 -EAVAN BOLAND (1944-), Irish poet and critic ' ... poetry is at bottom a criticism of life ... '
'Poetry is defined by its energies and its eloquence ... '
EXTRACT 5-WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850), English Romantic poet Commentary
'Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings ... ' 1:ro111 these quotations, we can see that poets use their own experiences and
nmtcxt as a source for their ideas - they take life by the throat and face its
EXTRACT 6 - l. A. RICHARDS (1893-1979), English literary critic, linguist, poet and rn111plexities. Personal, local, national and international events or crises can
teacher
provide them with material that can be worked into a poem. They draw on a
'[Poetry] is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos.' vivid background, powerful feelings, or a desire to make the reader reconsider
lhl11gs that are taken for granted. They aim to preserve a particular experience,
EXTRACT 7 - GUSTAV FLAUBERT (1821-80), French realist novelist
rn111111enting on, interpreting or questioning what has happened in order to
'Poetry is as exacta science as geometry.' l'llHage the reader in their search for meaning. Often underlying the focus of the
pm•m, there will be an implicit or explicit criticism of life as the poet seeks to find
EXTRACT 8- R. s. THOMAS (1913-2000), a Welsh poet and clergyman
ltll'illling in chaos.
'A rich background is essential in the making of a poem of substance ... ' The style will be distinctive because the poem is ultimately a verbal device, a
c:omposition in which language and structure are manipulated to create specific
EXTRACT 9 - PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822), English Romantic poet and dramatist
tlll•rts. The energy of poetry comes from its condensed syntax, the eloquence and
'[Poetry] lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar muslcality of its diction, and the importance of word order. Poets paint pictures
objects be as if they were not familiar ... ' for us with their words, freezing time so that we can see what they see.
EXTRACT 10- ANDREW MOTION (1952-), Poet Laureate, novelist and biographer J>oetic form is almost scientific beca use of the precision required of the poet.
Varlations in line length, stanza structure, rhyme and rhythm provide
'There is sorne primitive connection between poetry and significant events or crises constraints - the poet chooses a framework within which to explore ideas and
in our lives.'
thls Is often directly linked to the meaning. Poetic form can bring order to the
EXTRACT 11 - SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834), English Romantic poet, chaos of modern life, or structure to an overwhelming sense of grief; it can focus
philosopher and critic our attention and contain powerful feelings. Often when we read a poem, we
ldrntlfy with the feelings or ideas expressed - although we have not articulated
' ... prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order.' them ourselves, we have been in a similar situation or experienced the same
EXTRACT ~2- PHILIP LARKIN (1922-85), English poet and novelist 1mot1ons.
Above ali, we need to recognise that poetry can both teach and delight- it is
'[a poem] is a verbal device that would preserve an experience indefinitely by
reproducing it in whoever read the poem.' tloth lnstructional and entertaining; we can read it as part of a programme ol
ttudy or for pleasure. Poets do not just exist in the pastas names we recognise, bu1
6 Approaches to poetry
What is poetryl
 as living, contemporary commentators on llfe. We t'an rt•ud thelr work in class or
at home, but we can also hear them read lt thcmsl'lws ami thls can be when we
truly recognise the power of poetry to move us.
Poetry versus prose
Poetry is usually far more concentrated and intense than prose because of the
restrictions created by its form, line length, rhythm, rhyme and a tendency
towards a telegraphic or elliptical style. Poetic language is also heightened and
intensified as the poet strives to recreate experience.
Ezra Pound (1855-1972), an American poet, wrote about the way in which a
poet reduces experience into an intense and concentrated form.
Three years ago in Paris 1 got out of a 'Metro' train at La Concorde, and saw
suddeniy a beautiful face, and then another and another, and a beautiful child's
tace, and then another beautiful woman, and 1tried all that day to find words for
what this had meant to me, and 1 could not find any words that seemed to me
worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion ...
1wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work 'of
second intensity'. Six months later 1 made a poem half that length; a year later 1
made the following ... sentence:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet black bough.
1daresay it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. In a
poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward
and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.
Pound's poem is tightly structured and clearly conveys his experience in a very
visual way. It is quite unlike his narrative account of what took place on that day
in París. Where the prose version is rambling and loosely structured, the poem is
made up of two post-modified noun phrases; the concrete language and the repe-
tition of the prose is replaced by an abstract noun (apparition) that encompasses
all that he saw. The image of the petals reinforces and familiarises the abstract
noun with a concrete visual picture - one with which most readers can associate.
In addition, traditionally poetic features like end rhyme (crowd/bough) and inter-
na! rhyme (petals/wet), and the recurring plosives (black/bough) intensify the
effect of the lexical choice. The poem is a powerful and condensed visual repre-
sentation of a personal experience.
What makes a poem?
When you look at any literature, you can expect an individual and personal use
of language. Writers choose words far their descriptive, connotative, or
figurative possibilities, and literary texts therefore tend to have a heightened
tone in which every word is charged with significance. lmagery is crucial to the
8 Approaches to poetry
WilY In which writers build upa particular world view- it gives literature its visual
quallty and is often used to underpin the themes or ideas a writer wishes to
add fl'SS. The arrangement of words and clause elements allows writers to stress the
,1¡1,11ificance of particular lexical items or grammatical structures that are impor-
ta ni in terms of the meaning. By manipulating standard word order and moving
words/clause elements to unexpected positions, the writer can draw attention to
particular parts of the text.
The distinctive features of poetry, however, lie in the form, rhythm, rhyme
nml the often elliptical style. We can see immediately the variation in line
ll•ngths and the division into stanzas, and such visual features have an effect on
t hl' meaning. Poets divide their ideas in to logical units and we can often chart
lhl' development of a poem's ideas through the stanza structure; by placing
M•111a11tically important words and phrases at the beginning and end of lines
pol'ls can draw attention to them. Sound and rhythm enhance the overall effect
ot a poem, bringing it together as a semantic unit, reminding us of the poem as
n ll'XI to be read aloud, and controlling the expression of ideas. The style is often
mndensed and intensified because the poet is capturing an experience or
111oment in time within the tightness of a prescribed form. Conforming to a
particular rhythmical pattern or rhyme scheme, or changing word arder for
~l'lllantic effect can make the style elliptical - grammatical function words are
0111itted and this is one of the reasons poetry gains its reputation for being diffi-
n11t to understand.
Yet we have been surrounded by poetry from an early age - nursery rhymes
nnd piayground chants, songs and advertising jingles. We enjoy what we hear
hl•cause th.e patterns are memorable and they appeal to something instinctive in
us. In ahnost ali societies, poetry appeared befare prose. The rhythmic patterns
nnd repeated sounds made poetry suitable for oral cultures in which songs and
hullads were the means of keeping history ali ve. The principies are the same in the
poetry we read or study: we must recognise the music of the words and the poet's
ahllity to help us to understand our own experiences.
Read to enjoy! Do not let initial difficulties of structure, language and syntax
llVl'rwhelm you. Despite these challenges, close reading of poetry is rewarding. In
rxploring the words on the page, we find meaning and, when we stop being afraid
ami begin to enjoy the experience, the poem will sing.
Activity 2.3
Which features of the poems on page 10 are 'literary' and could be
found in other types of literature, and which features are
distinctive to poetry?
Comment on the effects created by the features you identify.
,, You may like to think about: the content, the language, the grammatical
and rhetorical features and the layout.
What is poetry? 9