Another Approach to Analyzing Poetry

I was flipping through Daniel Kane's What is Poetry: Conversations with the American Avant-Garde, a book of interviews with, among other big names of 20th century poetry, some of the folks we'll be studying this quarter (Ashbery, Koch, Mayer) and came across this exchange with Ann Lauterbach which might be helpful:

DK: Is there a method or series of steps that you might recommend teachers to take in presenting "On (Open)" [a poem of Lauterbach's they'd been discussing] to high school students not so familiar with poetry?

AL: A poem is not a puzzle to be solved. A poem is an experience, an event, in and of language. It should be approached as such:

• What kind of event happened to you when you read this poem?
• Did you get a feeling?
• Did you have an idea?
• Did you get reminded of something?
• Did you go elsewhere, away from the familiar world into another, stranger, one?
• Did you look up words and find out new meanings, as you would ask directions in a strange city?
• Why do you think the poet made this word choice, and not another?
• Why do you think the line is broken here, at this word, and not at another?
• How is a line break in a poem different from a comma or a period in a prose sentence?

I think this is an excellent way in which to approach the poems you'll be reading this quarter. Print this list, cut it out and keep it in the back of your book, consulting it often. Ask yourself these questions, and keep track of your responses. As we discussed in class yesterday, these works — and especially more abstract ones like Ashbery's — are going not going to have clear answers, and you're going to have to rely on your own reactions, your own associations, your particular readings. Find the punctive elements in each poem which get through to you, and please share them as part of our class discussions.

On Monday, I'd like to start by talking about "What is Poetry," taking apart its images and messages, in an attempt to find some sort of answer to the question its title poses. From there, we can move on to a few other poems. Hang in there: the more exposure you get to Ashbery's work, the more the shock of the new will wear off, and the easier it will be to work through each poem. Moreover, once you've cut your teeth on Ashbery, the remaining poets will seem relatively straightforward by comparison.