Appreciating Poetry
Poetry is interesting to read and enjoy. But, understanding poetry from contextual, rhetorical, thematic, figurative and constructive point of view is a beautiful skill to be learnt. The scholars have proposed various techniques to approach a poem. Let us begin with few of them:
1. Close Reading: The traditional tools of close reading, with its focus on poetic form and devices, are my first approach to the analysis, while I continue with discussion of what critics call the context of the poem, sonnet or sequence when that is particularly pertinent to poet's technical delivery. Thus, socio-economic, cultural and historical contexts are intrinsic to a complete analysis.
As we know, poets’ ends are two-fold:(1) to tell a story, and (2) to inform the poetic medium with metaphors that elucidate and build multiple levels of meaning and inquiry - its literary effects, the 'means' to poet's 'ends.'
2. Versification: This is a descriptive level; I use a full array of traditional analytical techniques, worth examining as a class. First, let us consider the verse as a structural unit, versification. This concerns us with whether and where the sonnet is divided, and whether and where it is tabulated, as well as how sentence stops and other punctuation are used within it. In sonnets, there is the related aspect of a 'turn,' the volta, which was historically placed in the ninth line, and which, when not placed there, drew attention to the words and ideas around it. The sonnet 'turn' has evolved, moved within the sonnet, and changed over time, and is used variously by different sonnet writers, often to affect meaning.9 In Seth's work, we see fanciful aspects of Byron's versification in Don Juan, as well as versification practices used by Alexander Pushkin in Eugene Onegin.
3. Enjambment: An enjambment is the "continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet or stanza," used to create meaningful effects, and also used to move the narrative action forward in a prosaic manner.
4. Rhythm: It is both the actual 'timed' rate of flow of the words or motion, and the precise depression level in the wave pattern created. As in song, downbeat is an element of this, as well as meter, usually treated separately.
5. Melody: Melody here is the musical effect of the sonnet, passage, or sequence noted. Is it monotonous or not? Hymn-like, psalm-like, prayer-like, a folk-song? What is the character of its musical effect?
6. Harmony: It is the degree to which the verse elements are harmoniously constructed in their variations from and similarities to each other. This includes examining points at which they are intentionally rendered in a disharmonious manner, and why.
7. Meter: It is the mainstay of analysis, involves an explication of the number of feet, as well as the character of the feet, where the stress falls, and where the pause, or caesura, enters, with and without reference to the poet's punctuation.
5 Phonological Concerns: Tone and Tonal Colour include several technical aspects. By tone, we are usually referring to the poet’s “attitude to his listener,” while ‘tone of voice’ and ‘voice’ are also now considered part of this analytical point. Tonal color includes aspects of rhyme and rhyming schemes - overall rhyme patterns and interior schemes, although other aspects of sound quality are a part of this analytical concern, including alliteration (repeated consonants or initial vowels) and assonance (similar vowel sounds within dissimilar consonant combinations). These are classified as phonological concerns.
6. Accent: Generally, the explication involves scansion. Aspects of scansion, the actual reading of the verse, involve commenting upon the rhythmical stress, or ictus, based upon an analysis of word-accent and sentence emphasis. These include whether the accent is primary or secondary, involves prefixes or other types of grammatical stress combinations, or uses specifically relational words in specific positions in the line and verse.
7. Scansion: The scansion exercise, critiquing the position of the rhythmical stress in the line and verse, takes us closer to discovering how the text creates effects. For instance, trochaic substitution is a specific type of inversion having the effect of giving special emphasis to the first foot of a metric set, while caesural inversion refers to a hovering of the stress in a line. Aspects of syllable analysis fall under scansion: Does the verse take a direct attack (initial truncation)? Does it add extra unstressed syllables at the beginning of the line (anacrusis) or elsewhere (hyperbeats)? Does it cut off the final unstressed syllables (catalexis)? How are the vowels treated: are they slurred (contraction)? or blended to omission (elision)? And how is pause used, specifically within the syllabic scheme? Today, linguists include syllable analysis under the category of morphophonological concerns. I elucidate these techniques when they are used by Seth, many of which are informed by scansion.
8. Theme: Theme, or motif, is used to create meaningful congregations of ideas in narrative action. I am referring to "a conspicuous element, such as a type of event, device, reference or formula," and a "recurrent poetic concept," or leitmotif.
9. Intention: Second, scholars have argued we must examine the author's intention. More broadly, we are interested in what is 'outside' the 'work,' per M.H. Abrams' analysis. For example, how is the poet's intention made evident, if it is; what world or 'universe' is seen or shown by Seth; and what audience is of interest to him in delivering this work? The work stands in relationship within a group of four concerns: itself, the author, the world and the reader.
10. Imagery: Imagery is both a literary effect and an organizing principle of separate note. This term encompasses both textual effects that elicit visual images, or "mental pictures," and, more broadly, "figurative language" used as "vehicles" for metaphors and similes.
11. Wordplay: The role of wordplay, Michael Spiller discusses this technique as one often seen in the work of poet, a critical component worthy of separate note, citing the traditional and long-standing 'board-game' quality of sonnets.
12. Idea: I note, here, another point of critical inquiry, that of idea. Here, the question asked is whether the poet has successfully managed and delivered an entire idea. There has been a traditional concern in sonnet criticism as to whether a full idea is communicated in each line of the sonnet, or a full concept in each sonnet. For example, when the idea is split, effect is sharpened, attention is drawn to the area, and the reader notes a heightened impact, contrast, or enhancement; while, when a short 'idea' appears complete in one line, its impact is emphasized, as a unit.
13. Rhetoric: With the term, rhetoric, M.H. Abrams suggests we examine any purposeful relationship between the author and the audience, while Terry Eagleton considers this term a departure point for analysis of context more broadly. In the traditional sense, we mean a style of speaking or writing.
14. Presentation: With the word, presentation, we refer to what Michael Spiller calls the poet’s use of "image, fancy, sign and trace," beyond wordplay, and in the realm of delighting the senses with the effective and efficient use of what he calls 'twist,' and 'hide.'
15. Form: The poem is written in the form of a sonnet with its fourteen lines and set structure. The poem contains a total of four stanzas – three stanzas of four lines each, and the last stanzas with only two lines.
1. The Pulley
When God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
Rest in the bottome lay.
For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse:
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.
-George Herbert
Appreciation:
It would be difficult to explain Herbert's poem without alluding to Pandora's box of gifts. The gods, especially Zeus, gave Pandora a box, warning her never to open it. Her curiosity overcame her, however, and she opened it, releasing innumerable plagues and sorrows into the world. Only Hope, the one good thing the box had contained, remained to comfort humanity in its misfortunes. In this poem, the fusion of the classical and the Christian add richness and dimension to the poem's guiding metaphysical conceit, which is a pulley that draws man slowly toward God.
Pulleys and hoists are mechanical devices aimed at assisting us with moving heavy loads through a system of ropes and wheels (pulleys) to gain advantage. We should not be surprised at the use of a pulley as a central conceit since the domain of physics and imagery from that discipline would have felt quite comfortable to most of the metaphysical poets.
In the poem, the central idea posited by Herbert is that when God made man, he poured all his blessings on him, including strength, beauty, wisdom, honor and pleasure. However, as in Pandora's box, one element remained. We are told that God "made a stay," that is, He kept "Rest in the bottome." We might, in modern parlance, call this God's ace. God is aware that if He were to bestow this "jewel" (i.e. rest) on Man as well then Man would adore God's gifts instead of God Himself. God has withheld the gift of rest from man knowing fully well that His other treasures would one day result in a spiritual restlessness and fatigue in man who, having tired of His material gifts, would necessarily turn to God in his exhaustion. God, being omniscient and prescient, knows that there is the possibility that even the wicked might not turn to Him, but He knows that eventually mortal man is prone to lethargy; his lassitude, then, would be the leverage He needed to toss man to His breast. In the context of the mechanical operation of a pulley, the kind of leverage and force applied makes the difference for the weight being lifted. Applied to man in this poem, we can say that the withholding of Rest by God is the leverage that will hoist or draw mankind towards God when other means would make that task difficult. However, in the first line of the last stanza, Herbert puns on the word "rest" suggesting that perhaps God will, after all, let man "keep the rest," but such a reading would seem to diminish the force behind the poem's conceit.
The importance of rest -and, by association, sleep- is an idea that was certainly uppermost in the minds of Renaissance writers. Many of Shakespeare's plays include references to sleep or the lack of it as a punishment for sins committed. In Macbeth, for example, the central protagonist is said to "lack the season of all natures, sleep" and both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are tormented by the lack of sleep. Even Othello is most disconcerted by the fact that he is unable to sleep peacefully once Iago has poisoned him with the possibility of his wife's infidelity with Cassio.
Herbert's Pulley, then, does not present a new concept. In fact, the ideas in the poem are quite commonplace for seventeenth century religious verse. What is distinctly metaphysical about the poem is that a religious notion is conveyed through a secular, scientific image that requires the reader's acquaintance with, and understanding of, some basic laws of physics.
Poetic Devices:
Simile: Compare 2 unlike things using "like" or "as." If Herbert wrote "creating man is like pouring talents into the earth," this would be a simile.
Metaphor: Compare 2 unlike things directly, not using "like" or "as." Example: Herbert does not use a simile. He describes the creation image as equivalent to the glass of blessings. He extends the image with examples: strength, beauty, wisdom, honor, pleasure and rest (stz. 2-3). [Up to stanza 3, Herbert creates an extended metaphor, but it has not become a conceit until the last stanza.]
Conceit: "An extended metaphor." That is the usual definition, but a conceit is more complex, more involved. A conceit not only extends the image, as in the 3rd stanza, but it develops the ideas and metaphor into a new, even surprising direction. [This is the signature of the metaphysical poet.] "Rest," the blessing God withholds, leaves us with "restlessness." As our restlessness drags us down (on one rope of the pulley), we rise (on the other rope) to God, who gives us the blessing of Rest.
Herbert adds the image of the pulley into (not just on to) the image of the glass of blessings. "The Pulley" is not just 2 metaphors with one extended. It is 2 metaphors working together to convey the meaning. The "glass of blessings" metaphor extends and expands until it develops into another image, the pulley..
Now let us analyse the following poems:
2. The Brook
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret
by many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I wind about, and in and out,
with here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silver waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
3. Where Mind is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
-Rabindranath Tagore
4. The Tyger
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
-William Blake
5. In the Bazaars of Hyderabad
What do you sell O ye merchants ?
Richly your wares are displayed.
Turbans of crimson and silver,
Tunics of purple brocade,
Mirrors with panels of amber,
Daggers with handles of jade.
What do you weigh, O ye vendors?
Saffron and lentil and rice.
What do you grind, O ye maidens?
Sandalwood, henna, and spice.
What do you call , O ye pedlars?
Chessmen and ivory dice.
What do you make,O ye goldsmiths?
Wristlet and anklet and ring,
Bells for the feet of blue pigeons
Frail as a dragon-fly’s wing,
Girdles of gold for dancers,
Scabbards of gold for the king.
What do you cry,O ye fruitmen?
Citron, pomegranate, and plum.
What do you play ,O musicians?
Cithar, sarangi and drum.
what do you chant, O magicians?
Spells for aeons to come.
What do you weave, O ye flower-girls
With tassels of azure and red?
Crowns for the brow of a bridegroom,
Chaplets to garland his bed.
Sheets of white blossoms new-garnered
To perfume the sleep of the dead.
6. The Road Not Taken
6. The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert frost
7. This Is Going To Hurt Just A Little Bit
One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open.
And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.
Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self-possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest.
So hard to retain your calm
When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line or love line or some other important line in your palm;
So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity
When you know your position is one of the two or three in life most lacking in dignity.
And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on.
And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there isn't a nerve in your head thatyou aren't being irked on.
Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.
And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,
But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.
And the circumstance that adds most to your terror
Is that it's all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,
But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he won't get mixed up, the way you do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget that left is right and vice versa?
And then at last he says That will be all; but it isn't because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof
With something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a horse's hoof.
And you totter to your feet and think. Well it's all over now and after all it was only this once.
And he says come back in three monce.
And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest,
That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition
when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition
is so that he won't have to go to the dentist.
- Ogden Nash
8. Indian Gipse
IN tattered robes that hoard a glittering trace
Of bygone colours, broidered to the knee,
Behold her, daughter of a wandering race,
Tameless, with the bold falcon's agile grace,
And the lithe tiger's sinuous majesty.
With frugal skill her simple wants she tends,
She folds her tawny heifers and her sheep
On lonely meadows when the daylight ends,
Ere the quick night upon her flock descends
Like a black panther from the caves of sleep.
Time's river winds in foaming centuries
Its changing, swift, irrevocable course
To far off and incalculable seas;
She is twin-born with primal mysteries,
And drinks of life at Time's forgotten source
-Sarojini Naidu
9. Night of the Scorpion
I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.
-Nissim Ezekiel
10. PROPHETS
Prophets have light
Screwed tight in their eyes.
They cannot see the darkness
Inside their own loincloth.
Their speech has grace
And their voice tenderness.
When prophets arrive
Dogs do not bark.
They only wag their tails
Like newspaper reporters.
Their tongues hang out
And drool as profusely
As editorials.
Crowds in the street
Split up like watermelons
When prophets arrive.
But there are times when even the fuse of heavenly stars is blown
Space boils like a forgotten kettle
The screw comes off from the eyes
And the blinded prophet is stunned
It is then that he comprehends the spiral staircase of heaven made of iron
The complexity of its architecture.
It is the first time that he apprehends God’s inhuman boredom
And the size of His shoes.
The weight of His foot.
And the total monopoly reflected
In His every movement.
It is then that he realises that
His journey so far is only
The space and time of His almighty yawn.
-Dilip Chitre
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