“O my deare master! cannot you (quoth I)
Make me a Poet, doe it if you can,
And you shall see, I’ll quickly bee a man.”
-Michael Drayton
Not only as a painting, but a poem can be seen in different ways. In The Art of Reading Poetry, Earl Daniels outlined how a poem could be seen as an experience, a story, an idea, an organization, and as music. More importantly, he emphasized democratizing poetry, underscoring that like all arts, it was for all who found time to take it seriously. Poets such as Shelley, insisting that “a poet is a nightingale, who sits in the darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds” had built a cultist’s temple and only succeeded at keeping the public distant. Rather, we should heed the wiser, truer words of John Keats, that “if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”
To appreciate poetry is to look at it with critical eyes, for it does not come as a gift from God or the grace of an English department. Too often, one looks at poetry with starry eyes and throbbing hearts, misreading a poem to be pleasurable when it is only a lack of understanding. The word appreciation comes from two Latin words: ad, meaning to or at, and pretium, meaning price or value. Thus at its simplest, to appreciate is to put an accurate value on something. To read seriously involves the most intense mental activity, thus in order to appreciate poetry, one takes the hard work of analysis and not the easy road of false praise.
Another heresy of reading poetry is the frequent preoccupation with morals and meanings of life. One should not approach a poem in quest of vital lessons or profound comments on man and the universe. If philosophy and morals are present, they will make themselves felt without your conscious searching for them, insistent on their share in your awareness of the complete poem. Rather, we should take the natural, simple approach, that the poet enjoyed an experience and recorded the experience to share with the audience. Likewise, poetry analyses are not all equally difficult. Levels are important; one does not start with Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Milton, or Shakespeare, for they are God’s noblest voices, the mountain summits residing at the end of arduous journeyings of poetry.
Lions in the path is a phrase coined by Buddha for obstacles keeping a follower from attaining Buddhist summum bonum of life. Lions are lurking in the path of one’s quest to read and enjoy poetry, the first being the preconception of what is and what is not poetry. For example, one may define poetry by conventional forms and rhymes, thus dismissing modern vers libre as only chopped up prose. Like other art forms, poetry evolves through time and is subjected to criticism and dismissal when they do not conform to traditional evaluations. The next lion in the path is that of substitution, by discussing biography, history, and sociology instead of the poetry itself. The bright student produces five pages devoted to the author’s life and personality, about his period, about the social conditions under which he lived and wrote, all in the name of “background”, and two pages to the actual poem. All of these topics are important, but one must first concentrate on the poem itself.
For poetry is music, we ought never to judge poetry without hearing it. To read aloud is a law for reading poetry to which there are no exceptions. It is not uncommon to read and re-read poetry, first for summary, then for detailed understanding, for techniques and craftsmanship, for compositions and styles. To assist in understanding poetry, have at hand an English dictionary, the Bible, and a dictionary of classical mythology, such as Thomas Bulfinch’s Mythology. From without, the poet is imposed by certain conventions, patterns, and molds. From within, the poet makes assumptions consciously and unconsciously about the reader’s knowledge, a kind of index of what he needs and needs not to tell the reader. It’s up to the audience to bridge the gulf in knowledge.
So let us dwell in Socrates’ prayer, “Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who dwell here, grant that I may be beautiful in the inner man. And may the outward and the inner man be at one. May I count the wise man only rich. And may my store of gold be such as none but the good can bear.” For the loftiest aim of poetry is such: that the outward and the inner man be at one.
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