WORDS AND MEANING

1. Looking at words
When you ask what puzzles you, interests you or gives you pleasure in a poem, you will
find that the answer is something to do with the way that the words work. The particular
function of words that will be dealt with in this section is the way they establish
meaning. You could write about every word in a poem, but if you did, your writing
would be mechanical and you would probably lose sight of the poem as a whole. It is
much better to read through the poem a number of times, looking out for the
striking word. words are used in a rich and intriguing way. You are being invited to
think about them, and as you do, you see more and more in them. This is what poetry
does with words - enriches and deepens their meanings. Sometimes as you are
reading, a word or group of words may strike you, but you don't know how to start
thinking about them. Here are three questions you might ask:
• Why was this word rather than a similar one used?
• What meanings does this word have in everyday speech that might be exploited
here?
• How does the contextenrich the meaning of the word?

 It is useful to look at the connotations of a word.

Connotations are the associations of meaning a word has acquired because of its
various uses. When you encounter a striking word, you can look at how in the
context, a number of connotations are brought into play. One of the reasons that
poetry is valued is because its words exploit a wide range of associations.

• You should not ignore 'little' words

- such as 'the', 'a', 'too', 'yet', 'in', 'and'. Sometimes, a poet can enrich even the
simplest and humblest of words. In MacNiece's 'Prayer before Birth', each irregular
stanza begins: 'I am not yet born.' That simple word 'yet' is very poignant as it
shows the unborn child poised on the edge of life, innocent of any corruption but
aware of the dangers of what is ahead. In Stevie Smith's 'Not Waving but
Drowning'.

2. How poets use words

You may feel that the advice to look for the striking word is too general. Ifso, what
other more specific advice can be given?
-Look for a change in tone
Sometimes this can indicate that a word is worth thinking about.
-Look out for repeated words
 When a poet uses a word more than once it is often because it is vital in the building
up of the poem's meaning.

-Look for contrast

This is another guide to important words.
-No word is more poetic than another word
When you are asking questions about words, you must not imagine that some words
are more worthy of study just because they sound more 'poetic'. This is particularly
important in modem poems where quite ordinary words are used.
-Figures of speech
When you write about words that puzzle, interest or give you pleasure, you will need
to master some technical terms. The ones the examiners will expect you to know are:
• simile
• metaphor
• conceit
• personification
• symbol
• image
• paradox
• ambiguity.

3. Conceit
When a simile or metaphor is elaborate or far-fetched, and strikes you at first as
being inappropriate and even outrageous, it is called a conceit. Conceits were very
popular in seventeenth-century poetry, so if you are studying, say, the poems of
Donne, Herbert, Marvell or Crashaw you are likely to find yourself in the position
of having to say something about them. Faced with this problem, there are two
things that you might try to do.

-The strangeness of the comparison

A good conceit has the impact of something odd or unexpected. The initial reaction
of a reader is usually that he or she is more aware of the differences than the
similarities.
-The need for persistence
The second thing that demands attention is the way we have to read them at length
and in detail, pondering each development at it unfolds. (In this respect they are
similar to epic similes.) Sometimes a conceit of Donne stretches over several lines.
(See the entry under 'conceit' in the Glossary.) Reading a conceit is like going on a
strange journey of exploration. At the end of the journey, we may imagine that the
poet hopes the reader will see the point of the comparison; it may have seemed
wilfully strange but it is, nevertheless, intriguingly right. That is the way the
accusation of oddity can be met; if the reader persists, illumination will come.
4. Symbol
A symbol can be defined in the following way:
A symbol is a word that standsfor, or points to, a reality beyond it self
Sunrise, for instance, is often used for a symbol of a new beginning. That example
helps you to see something else about symbols:
Symbols often share in the realityfor which they stand.

5. Images and imagery

GCSE, A-level and university questions often invite candidates to discuss the
imagery of a poem. Because the term covers simile, metaphor, conceit,
personification and symbol, what was said about those terms may apply to the more
general word imagery. What, however, you must avoid is mere labelling; you must
always try to write about its place in the poem. But what is that place? Whenever
you are invited to write about imagery, there are three questions that you might ask.
• Does it help to create the atmosphere of the poem?
• Does it establish a pattern in the poem?
• Does it help to focus the meaning of the poem?

6. Advice about technical terms

• As with all technical terms, you will learn to master them by usage.
• Whenever you take notes or write an essay, you should try to use the appropriate
technical terms.
• When you first begin to use them, it is a good idea, particularly in the case of
imagery, to think them through in detail. You can do this by picturing the effects
created by similes and metaphors and listing all the shades of meaning that emerge
in symbols. Although this is somewhat artificial, it will help you to see just how rich
are the meanings that words convey.
There is, however, one warning to give. Sometimes it is not possible to identify a word as
particular figure of speech. For instance, in Blake's 'The Sick Rose' it is not clear whether
the rose is a real, a symbolic or a metaphoric one. There is, of course, no virtue simply in
labelling, so when you cannot use an appropriate technical term, you should just
concentrate on writing about the richness of the language.