Introduction to Poetry

1. Poetry
Love it or hate it?

2. What is a poet?
 A poet is somebody who feels, and who
expresses his [her] feelings through words.
 This may sound easy. It isn’t.
 A lot of people think or believe or know they
feel
 – but that’s thinking or believing or knowing;
not feeling. And poetry is feeling- not
knowing or believing or thinking.
--e.e. cummings
Source: Fire and Ice, ed. R.J. McMaster

3. What is a poet?
 Almost anybody can learn to think or
believe or know, but not a single
human being can be taught to feel.
Why? Because whenever you think or
you believe you know, you’re a lot of
other people; but the moment you feel,
you’re NOBODY-BUT-YOURSELF.
--e.e. cummings
Source: Fire and Ice, ed. R.J. McMaster.
Toronto: Longmans, 1970.

4. Questions to ask when reading a
poem…
 How would you describe the speaker of the
poem?
 Does the tone change or stay the same?
 What words stand out to you?
 What symbols resonate with you in the
poem?
How would you interpret them?

5. Billy Collin’s “Introduction to
Poetry”
 Introduction to Poetry
 By Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem
 and hold it up to the light
 like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
 and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
 and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
 across the surface of a poem
 waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
 is tie the poem to a chair with rope
 and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
 to find out what it really means.

6. Introduction to Poetry - Collins
 What is Billy Collin’s asking his
students to do with poetry?
 What do they want to do with it?
 What are some poems you like? Why?
 What poems do you dislike? Why?

7. Record images and decode meanings to
read poetry
 How does the poet make the setting real
to you?
 What key images are particularly striking
or revealing?
 What senses does it appeal to?
 What emotions does it stir up?

8. William Carlos Williams
 Pure, simple experience
 No explanation
 Became dissatisfied with imagism and learned objectivism - poem
itself is an object
 Concerned with local happenings
 Famous quote by him – “No ideas, but in things”
 Presented things so accurately and clearly that the things inside them
cause the meanings to the readers to come out/be clear to the
reader.
 Wanted the “thing” to speak to the reader

9. “This Is Just to Say” W.C.
Williams
 How does the poet
make the setting real
to you?
 What key images are
particularly striking or
revealing?
 What senses does it
appeal to?
 What emotions does it
stir up?

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

10. For more information on analyzing poetry,
refer to one of these sites:
http://www.hamilton.edu/academics/resou
rce/wc/WritingaboutPoetry.html
http://alpha.furman.edu/~moakes/Powerw
rite/poems.htm

11. Really…the end