Chapter One HOW DOES A POEM 654 How Does a Poem Mean? thom more visible in on to the reader, onco the t will restore of tho poetic struc of a horse” ‘an experience the readet F tho arts. one, but vom Age kaowa by marks vw know what horea fs" los Dickens, Hard Timee will not be final chapter may have chosen is not intended in any way as a verbal | quastion one hears of poetry is “ rested rather in “How” the poet ‘The School of Hard Facts over which Mr. Gradgriad presided was a of fixed Mr. Gradgrind would have agroed with a recent ‘of @ poem should be as certain vould have assured himself that he ses. "Now girl number twenty,” ‘you know what @ talk about Tn 1951 when I was teaching at " thom valued poots—organized s smi > about the poems ea with him. That group for two year t a poems without actually ie methods of measurement evolved by the phy- ied to all human processes. And there still se is a satisfactory description 1p consisted of Richard Eberhast, Jor sd Wilbor, and myself. 1 am indebt ly what L have stolen, ‘ratitude to them ¥ has h quadruped.” No gumnbler ever bet on one. T might have L would acleowledge my thefts that they are rich enough to be ias evolved jor his experience. (“A good winded “but he has a mouth lke iron and won't answer Pratt, Be ‘me with ideas and insights I could not stone suggested : ‘own the haunches repeated in the mouth held hard-down by the bit neck with the ‘quads666 How Does a Poem Mean? } How Does a Poem Mean> 667 ff speaking are three) And in pootry thece is the st ~e one has learned to ex- muped” may be to the biologist, these three ws how many yrds of intestines, What dos it matter? Hei eoncemed with sponse-to, a seuse of the character and reaction of the living talmal. And zoology caunot give hi that. No all the anatonizing ofall the world’s horses could teach a maan horse sense. So for poetry. The concern is not to ar the books, b children memorized large s waining, Wiggloswarth’s theolog Yet today The D: asa scholar’s curio, The difference is will never be a complete that the reader who has experienced me inde. ‘Therefore, ‘ther hand, no one need go to school in ‘opera: the Milanese do not study opera, , goes thous the poe ) ho appronching the portant 97" He heson irom wh Mean?” His mind interpret” the poom what he etnias ovr fan EXamintion unnwer) sed forgetting tn em, Thus, students mi the experience, not rust note with eare—as in the ease earning is ful sive rise to such heated argument as one can honr throughout the seasor WHAT nOES THE FOES ARAN? is too often a self-dHow Does a Poem Mean aon Test provided a valuable clue when he spoke of here is simply. Frost meant pre Gaumearien meant when be spoke of the (and toward all act) as the Spictnied, tha AA more useful way of asking the ly does it build itself into a form How do these elements became the 1 inseparable from dhe meaning? As Yeats weete O body syayed How shall Y tell ooo tion is now nos’. pleasure musfe, 0 quickening glance, te dancer from the dance? ‘What the poem is is insepea ‘dance is in the dancer an wae Wher “dancer Above all else, net was his own took the same self ble from its Performance of itself, "The dancer is in the dance, Or pat no one is dancing Pond bat . High Diddle diddle when he is dan The ca ‘The cow Mr, Gradar Io te with Fhe poo are. ly pén Nas eleaned my tool Bat, be Biah pled books, if clang ke vic garners the behold upon the nights sta ly symbols ofa high am, Tinay ney And when Ife that activity ‘That [sha SBieulty” one to be afrsid of. Chess isa play ctvity, Never have e faery power sae Dlayers deliberately make the game ithe Toves~then be difficulties. The equatio ” fo fm. No chess player finds any ‘an obviously migaes aDPenent. Every game ever invented mankind i 2 way of {rehire thiney hard for the fun of te. The act jeg Of course, isin make the vanity of human wishes a is painful hy did Keats take the tr wad to play last year's Rose id of the fe Srammar school teams, He ties to fed to oxtend themselves, for harder play. ifferent process from evelop a pos imple: no dif real pleasure in playing ms to a stop at the middle of the twoll hat Why, too, did Brain, and the books he f chiborate figure. Why did Keats ut such striking phrases ae “th really convinoed that Dhrase his idea with sach to make the something a Pig inpule thatthe literalist and message. Graderind overlooked the living fun it hey an undefined y did he wish nothingness is670 How Does a Poem Mean? How Does a Poem Mean? o74 serious the overt message of a pocm, the unparaphraseable and undim, ‘He ives his harness bells a shake ishable life of the poem Hes in the way tt performs itself through th ‘To ask if there is some mistake, Adificulties it imposes upon iteelf. The way ‘The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake, admiratiy ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep, Al of these forms—t them—bave mean But [ have promises ta keep, only as they succeed in being good pectormances. And miles to go before I sleep, ‘One sees a wizard of a poet tossing his words in the air and catchin And miles to go before I sleep. ‘them and tossing them again—what 2 grand stunt! Then suddenly ou may be astonished to find that the poet is not simply juggling cup: Note that the poem begins as a simple description ‘but that saucers, roses, rhymes and other random objects, but the very stuff of life a way that suggests meanings far beyond the speci And discovering that, one discovers that seeing the poet's ideas flash ston. wement from the specific to the general is mn peformed under suaheconta, i net eye pti of poet ‘Selore Di ¢ experience that deepens every man’s sense ¢(P- 1005), and Imes” @ Chambered Nautilus” (p, 742) pee ate emer era omega rea mala conAnd he Wonght Weaization in these ems, in’ soae, Grades teen ie va ust watching show! ee teem addtional to Uso apoahe at. That only a poe can ilustate How a poem works. One ofthe purpoaton athe ha inna pat of edie we ok aa of this volume isto provide beginning students with a resonable bulk s€nfed when ane speaks’ of "a lackodst moval” Tene Levee oe poems from the great tradition of English and American pociry. But graspeustakiogly careful to avoid the tacked-on ioral. Everything m the as are the virtues of wide reading, they amount to nothing unless ‘typeet ‘pretends, on one level, to be part of # ; reading goes deep as well as wide, It is good to read much, It is evetsniiot miss’ the feeling that by the end of th re Important to read a little in greater depth, for every poem one reaismething much more far-reaching than closely will teach him something about how to xead another poem. 1g home to go to bed. There can be ‘What should such a close reading ti tion? Pe 's owl pleasure in this poem Was in making the large Here it poem, one of the mater pric of America, possy, pect ofthe poem rather that asking fo rete de ey the best known poem by 2 American post: insite of sell that the latger meaning is snade te Geae Rees peda etl okt at promancn wal chs ar de eee ® ; syening | Manet bern gtk? dtualon. A cam—loowing Robert Fro Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening dor on = Year or Now Hanae mak i i ee eae : HRBUIL 1s oo tad ave puter © nS oF ao Robert Frost ce the easy down-drift af the snow the dark woods. We eld Fro ther tings: ft that she mnt ne prs Gusieors owns thee vonds and wher be lia} nl road Gata ee Hs he inthe wa hws [eos0h Mee dal bream top Ur sap. os pee Ho lat ene napa hes [ray whet errand he i on? why dove he sy be sey oe nat ’0 watch his woods fil up with mow. Jese are? what is the significance of watching another mink wove Ui vase) Such questions can be mulupied abnor ety jing real point, but for pres purposes let us assume that we have Seen U0 tee one of he gent oman ett oy es ‘The darkest evening of the year. | Note that the foene is sot in the simplest. possible. ‘We have no ee say He pti ting that te oan open bees oe him but EE eet eee ee em eee Se rg er ve rT ‘Whose wo His house is in the villaglot tho actin speak fori A good novels who wishes us to know n citer doce not fell us that staat got or bad and leave ie at that halle, he lazadgees the | the drama of why. Why did hin 8 not asked himself why he stopped Identity as a horse ba! for something How Does a Poem Mean? a death wish? that hans the third. presence the movement (the all-engulfing?) across both their live—wi in knows the second darkness of the dark hi no ready answer to this com is them—all three of thor remain here longer to ponder these tal But a fourth foreo prompts ‘Then and only thon—his feelings dramatiz he has given form to~does the py st of his final scenic. “The woods at nd of the syllables cross tug of mo: venture on the t yet.” He hss a long way to go~—miles to go hefore hie ean sleep. Yes, miles to go. He repeats the line and the performance ends, But why the repet Yyefore I sloop” there ean be Yay to go yet before I can get i, however, “miles to go” and “And miles to 20 he means, “T have a long The second time he says ie farn or another, and Joke, He wer it, He could answer some is not enough. rock dropped into a pool: it sends the spples center point of “miles to go” is probably a iwod of being close to meaning, perhaps, "is maybe th But the ripples o ter and the longer oneHow Does a Poem Mean? How Does a Poem Mec a Jog-atthe-same-instant is af : sparkle has gone (OF poctry and of life itself. For th lly tired of these combinetions, ‘When one ‘Ba dynamic and living thing, One experiences it as one experiences} he is certainly entitled to suspect that the poet did not really life-as everybody but Mz. Gradgrind experiences hfe. Ono is never done that if there had bean in English such as word as, 5 with it: every timo ho looks he sees something new, and it changes even and harmony,” ke would gladly have fas he watches. And that very senso of continuity in fuidity is one of the} So one feels that tho writing is haphazard: that Ends of knowledge, one of the ways of knowing, that only the ats 1 he does teach, pootry foremost among them c 7 likes to see the rhymes fal into Frost himself certainly did not ask what th came|- place, but he must ithe? ciding what 5 men must search jer again for the meaning of their deepest experiences, Th “Stopping by Woods on « Saowy Evening” can i endl ing, but an act o jed to thyme not two lin the poem in another way. Did Frost kno wh sing to bezan? Considering the poem simply as a pion off thy herman had lng ome conaet ful to respond to the magni ; , when he took that frst chance, that he was where, with ove fip, seven of the simple going to write a short poem. He wold have hd that mach forotate oft i So the fist stanza emerged-yhymed = a b a. And with the eortan sense more precisely stunt by @ jue : -d to tuke a chance and Pai i he Soe sae grand stunt that Frost siroto th wrth ine. wove, Frost st hits ons going to write those od: he erate them becauss Dut managed to do so It is this unstrained fullilnent of one’s diff by saying that Frost began by e if easy in hamess.” Despite all his sel ‘way of writing a four not only that Frost took on @ hand rhyme. tively easy. English, boing a more agglomerate language, has fa rather 9s if a jug ‘an Italian poet writes} to hho could really ba rhyme words available, a line, he can summon ‘p agninst a difficulty ‘hyme from the thirdHow Does a Poem Mean? How Docs a Poem Mean? 077 just about to rush ia and put the Virgin descended 19ugh/snow” of stanza one. That wo matical symmetry of rhyme four times, Bt Advice might be defensible in theory, a rhyme repented afte i so far from its original rhyme sound that its fooling as ly bo lost, and what good is thoory if the reader is uot moved by (as something else) th rmbols-put-together a the monks stand for? The juggler? of freedom (in poetry)? does the parable mean to participate in poem? ‘You observe one futher point: that the human-insight. of th ‘poom,-snd.the technicalities of the poetic devices are inseparable. Hach Foods ihe other. This play is the poem's me y entixely what a good posm means) How ar aazANs—a_progess one can come much closer to diseussing, w to do, he did it well, and he was happy in ‘As ho grow older, howover, misfortunes erowded hima. ill and tired, he tock ind by the time he had covered he decided to remain thore. It was a pleasant monastery de: cated to tho Virgin and each of the monks and brothers sot himselt special task in her honor. One illuminated manuscripts to offer her, an- ecoratad her altar, anothor raised flowers. Only the juggler Finally, in despair, the juggler Ono day a pasting brother discover ue and summoned the other mo the jugaler at work before ti to witness the pro}