On Poetry

I have often found that by the time that students got to my class, many of them hated poetry.  Some of them were indifferent.  And most of them were befuddled with it.  They felt you needed a guidebook and an English Teacher to figure out what was going on.  I wanted them to know that they could figure it out themselves if they gave it a chance.  After a number of years, I came up with Three Fundamental Rules of Poetry, that I believe made poetry both much more approachable and much easier to comprehend.  Here they are:

Mr. Scotese's Three Rules of Understanding Poetry

1) Literal before Figurative

For so long, students have been told that poetry is riddled with symbols and deep, hidden meanings that must be deciphered in order to understand the poem.  HOGWASH.  First of all you can't figure out all of that "stuff", unless you first know the literal, the story of what the poet is saying.  And, secondly, most of the time - you don't even need that symbolism, deeper meaning interpretations.  Poems are so powerful on their own.  And, you may see a symbol - someone else may see a completely different symbol - and we all know from modern literary theory - There is no such thing as author intentionality - so if they intended a symbol - perhaps even that is meaningless.  Like I said, there is so much in the literal of the poem - figure that out - and if you have the time and inclination, you can move on to the figurative.

2) Know the Meaning of Every Word

How can you possibly know what is going on in a poem - literal or otherwise - unless you know what all of the words in a poem mean?  Give students dictionaries.  Remind them to look up words when they are reading poems for homework (or at least look at the footnotes that give the definitions in their text books).  I often ask for definitions of words from poems (or other texts) as the extra credit on my Reading Quizzes.   Sometimes - if the word is important enough - it's not extra credit, it's an entire question on the quiz.

3) Know the Antecedent of Every Pronoun.

I used to explain to students that poems are like telegrams (have to then explain to them what these are).  Poets have to "pay" for every word (because their language is condensed and focused) so they learn to use words sparingly and use a lot of pronouns.  Sometimes these pronouns are right out there (he, she, their, etc.) - but sometimes they are implied in the sentence.  So first you need to figure out that their is a "gap" an implied pronoun - then you need to figure out what that pronoun (often "what") is.

I honestly think that 90% of poems can be understood by everyone by using these three simple rules.

How to Read a Poem

I strongly urge you to print the poems out for your students - so that they can write directly on them.  They should cover them with their comments.  When they have the handout to read for homework and bring it into class - I tell them to take notes in class in a different color pen than what they used at home.  It's great for them to be able to see what they were able to get on their own - and they will start "getting" more and more.

Break the poem down into its simplest parts using Power Point or Google Slides.  Put one or two lines up on the screen at a time - so the students don't get overwhelmed.  They will carry this over into their own reading (and annotating).

Have the students cover the poem - so only the lines you are going over (either orally or on the slide presentation) are showing.  By not thinking ahead - it makes the breaking down and understanding of the line(s) in front of them so much easier. 

A great lesson to see all of this in action is The Wyatt & Howard Lesson from the English Renaissance.