Re:On getting poetry
by pradn on Thursday April 01, 2021 @02:23PM
(#26664216)
You're absolutely right. Poets play with words, sounds, and ideas. And extracting the meaning shouldn't be your first aim - perhaps it should be enjoying the sound and the cadence and the imagery.
Consider the first stanza of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale:
A few things that you'll probably pick up with no effort at all:
1) the puzzlement of what "Lethe" is or what it even means
2) the joke of calling your mouth a "drain"
3) the cleverness of "being too happy in thine happiness"
4) the way the long third sentence keeps going and going, ending in the release of singing, just like a bird flies, sits on a branch, and sings "with full-throated ease"
At a first read, the poem is delightful to me just because it speaks of the happiness of a bird and the unhappiness of being human. The musicality is so lovely I want to memorize it, and bring it out whenever I see a bird or want to sing like one or fly like one.
And then you can read the reams of analysis people have drawn from this poem.
Consider the first stanza of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44479/ode-to-a-nighti...
A few things that you'll probably pick up with no effort at all: 1) the puzzlement of what "Lethe" is or what it even means 2) the joke of calling your mouth a "drain" 3) the cleverness of "being too happy in thine happiness" 4) the way the long third sentence keeps going and going, ending in the release of singing, just like a bird flies, sits on a branch, and sings "with full-throated ease"
At a first read, the poem is delightful to me just because it speaks of the happiness of a bird and the unhappiness of being human. The musicality is so lovely I want to memorize it, and bring it out whenever I see a bird or want to sing like one or fly like one.
And then you can read the reams of analysis people have drawn from this poem.