How to Read Poetry

Writing is a curious thing. You have to plumb the depths of yourself and find all your darkness in hopes of staving off the outer darkness long enough to carve a little haven of light which is a story or a poem. Then you send your light out by means of a gentle blow into the wider world in the hope that it will illuminate the darkness of others for a time.

Into that closed-off world walks the reader. A stranger, someone the writer never meets. The job of interpreting and caring for what the writer has written lies with these shadowy, half-imagined beings. The reader, what is the reader looking for? I can’t speak for other readers. But I can speak for myself as a reader and on the subject of poetry in particular, this is what I have to say:

Become a journeyer with the poet. Open up your mind and search for the places between particles where spirit slips in. Look for the clues to your own soul in the gaze of another. Let the poet take you on an odyssey into yourself. Trace their footsteps in the sand. As readers, as people, we can never see anything as it truly is, but we can see reflections through layers of glass and these cast unknowable shapes onto our minds. Even in the blackness of space, there is never total darkness.

So when it comes to poetry, find the places where it slips into you and settles inside your flesh, pulsing gently and illuminating some hitherto unknown part of your psyche. How to read poetry: feel it, don’t think it. Travel through words, silences and the new lands they create within you. Feel the tingle of the unspoken which the poet is transmitting. Above all, don’t analyse. Don’t ascribe objective meaning – not, at least, until you’ve first allowed your spirit to commune with the poem and through it, the poet. What makes poetry special is that it conveys so much more than mere words. Everything comes together in a poem – sound, silence, shape, rhythm and these together communicate so much more than the words alone could ever do. But you will never catch the meaning if you stare too hard at it. Allow it to settle on you in its own good time. Even if you don’t objectively understand the poem you’ve just read, you’ll find a joy in it that goes beyond the logical mind to explain.