How to Read a Poem

by Burton Raffel

An introductory text that is both an anthology of over 200 poems and a comprehensive exploration of the form. Over 100 poets featured; those most widely represented include Blake, Byron, cummings, Dickinson, Donne, Alan Dugan, Frost, Louise Gluck, George Herbert, Keats, Pope, Pound, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Yeats.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism, School, Criticism

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1984

About the author

Burton Raffel was a translator, a poet and a teacher. He has translated many poems, including the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.

Reviews

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A breakdown of the various parts that make up a poem and poetry with lots of examples along the way. As person with very little poetry knowledge, I found it easy to understand and quite readable. Not sure how much better I’ll actually be at reading and evaluating poetry now but I feel I have a stronger grasp on it.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good overview of poetic practice in the English language. It is, in effect an anthology of poetry in English (there are a few translations, but Raffel, himself a translator from a number of languages, does not consider the translation's relationship or faithfulness to the original) with extensive commentary. Raffel generally concentrates his analysis on the specific feature he's chosen the poem to illustrate (metaphor, allusion, repetition) but almost always includes a brief general assessment as well. I liked a majority of the poems, but tended to need Raffel's hand-holding to focus my mind on more than a few of his selections.

I tend to read for narrative, so non-narrative poetry usually struggles to retain my interest. For example, I liked "Lion" by Michael Hettich because there's an implied narrative, or at least the skeleton of one.

Raffel has occasional negative comments on the various poems he's chosen, but the only one he seems to see nothing good about is one picked to illustrate "obscurity": "There Are Many Pathways to the Garden" by Philip Lamantia "This is, in my judgment, impenetrable," is Raffel's comment. As far as my own understanding goes, "When All My Five and Country Senses See" by Dylan Thomas might illustrate "obscurity" equally well, though in fact it's chosen as an example of "alliteration". Raffel doesn't pretend to a full comprehension, but accepts the poem as a primarily sensual experience. "There is some clear loss of meaning but not, I think, a crippling loss," he summarizes.

For the inexperienced and intimidated reader of poetry, Raffel's frankness about poetic comprehensibility is refreshing and encouraging. Here's an poem used to illustrate "allusion":

The Crimes of Bernard

They were always arguing that we
were either the Devil's puppets or
God's marionettes, so when I said,
"What's the difference?, the latter
has us by the long hairs, the former
by the short, the best thing
about Commedia dell'Arte is
improvisation," they said, "There
are only two sides to a question: to
propose a third is treason if true.
Traitors we snatch bald, we
cut off their balls, we set them out
naked on the road to nowheres
as two-bit Abélards, two-bit whores,
and go on arguing as before." (Alan Dugan)

Raffel explicates the references to medieval scholasticism and the story of Abélard and Eloise, but though he explains "Commedia dell'Arte", he parenthetically adds, "(an allusion, I must admit, that I have never been able to understand, in the context of this poem)".

In illustrating "repetition", Raffel quotes this by Byron:

I read the Christabel;
 ⁠⁠Very well:
I read the Missionary;
 ⁠⁠Pretty—very:
I tried at Ilderim;
 ⁠⁠ Ahem!
I read a sheet of Marg'ret of Anjou;
 ⁠⁠ Can you?
I turned a page of Webster's Waterloo;
 ⁠⁠Pooh! pooh!
I looked at Wordsworth's milk-white Rylstone Doe;
 ⁠⁠ Hillo!
I read Glenvaron, too, by Caro Lamb;
⁠ ⁠ God damn!

Of the final line, he says, "even Byron is defeated by Glenvaron - or, perhaps, allows himself cheerfully to seem defeated, in order to lighten his poem with a bit of variation." Can it be that Raffel is unaware that Glenvaron is a roman à clef about Byron by a former lover?

Raffel concentrates on writers who are primarily poets, as opposed to novelist-poets like Melville or Updike, and provides a mix from the very familiar to items, and perhaps poets, that will be known only to specialists (who presumably won't require this book). Among the prominent, I was somewhat surprised by the absence of Poe and Auden.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Read a Poem is an incredible book in a lot of ways. Raffel manages to touch on every aspect of poetry from the very abstract (meaning, metaphor, musicality) to the very mechanical (structure and meter). He does this with a wide variety of over 200 example poems and brief explanations which do not overstay their welcome.

In fact, if anything, I craved more of Raffel's explanations. Particularly in the chapter on metaphor. Hey, I thought I was a pretty astute reader, but the meaning of many poems I encounter are, unfortunately, still quite opaque to me. His comments for these are more like guideposts: very helpful in pointing the way to understanding without even remotely spoon-feeding the answers.

As a beginner, I found this to be a very dense and rich book. It required careful reading. I read this in small doses over a period of two and a half months. It has been in every room of the house and in the back yard. It has ridden in the car. It has been in stores.

Despite its density, How to Read a Poem did not ever feel like an academic text to me. In fact, I became truly enamored with it when I came upon this passage in the commentary about Philip Levine's poem, "A Late Answer" in Chapter 3:

"I think there may be some comfort for the beginning reader of poetry in the confession, which I freely make, that I neither understand nor like the lines about the sea saving "it's tears / for the rising tide." ...why the sea weeps here I cannot fathom."

That was an awesome and very welcome admission. And there's more like it shortly after in the sub-chapter on "Obscurity" wherein I finally, truly came to understand and accept that much of my problem with older poetry has nothing to do with my (lack of) innate intelligence, but with the fact that I don't share a classical Greek and Latin education with the great writers of yore. "Obscurity" is completely wonderful and I wish I could simply quote it here in its entirety. I'll simply give you this taste (from his commentary on a poem by Philip Lamantia): "I have no idea what this is all about...I believe in poetry as communication, but not in poetry as befuddlement." (!)

Again, his wonderful frankness appears in Chapter 4's sub-chapter "Allusion; Acrostics" when describing the difficulty of understanding the allusions used in a Hilda Doolittle poem wherein he calls them "basically indecipherable" and "I have tried to track the allusion down; I cannot. Is it real? legendary? imaginary? I do not know" and a line is "more or less baffling" and finally and importantly, he concludes "...without understanding so many of the important words, how can one hope to understand the poem? (I do not myself understand even the title...)."

The Allusion sub-sub-chapter ends with "Over-allusiveness is not, to be sure, the mark of all modern poetry; it is definitely the mark of some modern poetry. ...It becomes, in the end, a matter of taste." I think that's a very nice way to put it.

Oh, and I can't help sharing this hilarious Raffel summation of acrostics: "But if neither John Keats nor Alexander Pope can do better than this, why need we linger over the acrostic form?"

In general, I think the ordering of content in this book is excellent. Starting with the least technical aspects of poetry like metaphor is a great way to get people in the door. By the time we get to form and metrics, I think we're ready for the details.

Other oft-neglected features that are real stand-outs in How to Read a Poem are the Table of Contents that actually includes the sub-chapters and no less than three indexes (Authors, Poems, and Subject)! These all combine to make this not only a great primer and introduction, but also an excellent reference!

Tags: down-to-earth, scholarship, excellent presentation, poems galore, lucidity, bafflement, hilltop, outcrop, cowbell, buttercup, whetstone, thunderstorm, pitchfork, steeplebush

[Swanny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Raffel took an approach I hadn't seen in other books. Having a whole section talking about "obscurity" in poetry was very validating to read because I do struggle very much with reading older famous poetry. The last chapter on meter broke things down in a very satisfying way. I've read and offered many explanations of my own and none of them so completely covered the nuances and shortcomings inherent in trying scan English verse. He neglects to mention several metric feet and substitutions (amphibrach, spondee, pyrrhics) and as a result I would scan some of his examples quite differently. However, his mention that stresses can be stronger or weaker relative to each other rang very true to me, and that's not something I'd read in any other book (in my memory). He could have done to clarify that, despite the fact we tend to move towards iambic feet, half the fun in attempting anapest, dactylic, and trochaic meter is that very difficulty. Very interesting focus was applied to some things I hadn't figured to be very common in poetry but nothing hit me as outright incorrect. His willingness to call out existing bad poetry was very bold and entertaining to read. The section on "syllabic" poetry in English was very funny to read as well. The second section of the first chapter was a nightmare and a slog to read to the point that I'd rather tell someone to skip it when I recommend the book. The method of referring to alliteration in a poem by describing in paragraph form afterward was...extremely tedious. There's got to be a better way than flipping back and forth 30 or so times to see what he's trying to say.
This book was different than others I've read, very interesting, and not very comprehensive. I'd hesitate to call it good for a beginner unless you learn very well by reading examples.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seem unable to retain any information about the mechanics of poetry and realize I’m missing some of the enjoyment that comes with close reading. I got this book to see if I could remedy that. It’s a wonderful, plain-spoken, thorough, even witty guide. I’m not sure how much it stuck with me though. Not the book’s fault—I begin to suspect I don’t have much of a natural curiosity about the nuts and bolts of poetry. In Charlotte Mason terms my mind is not taking on answers because it’s not posing these questions. So I suppose I’ll just plod on reading poetry for the surface enjoyment and exposure.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best chapter, which should have been the first or second, comes last. It is on metrics and is clear about feet and stressed and unstressed syllables and counting metric lines. Best overview of that I’ve read anywhere yet. The other chapters (on Meaning, Metaphor, Approaches and Techniques, Devices, Shapes and Structures) are also clear and well illustrated with poems that showcase the features under discussion.

Raffel is a brisk, engaging advocate for poetry, even, curiously, when some of the examples he cites are bad examples or include poems that Raffel disparages for one reason or another. Written in the mid-80s, the book, as such instructional manuals are wont to do, features poems by mostly established poets, but Raffel dared to include a few younger ones, including Louise Gluck, that have stood the test of time pretty well, or in Gluck’s case, very well.

He is opinionated, willing to be wrong, sharp eyed and eared when it comes to technical analysis, less reliable when it comes to taste and interpretation. How to Read a Poem is never less than useful, and sometimes it is more. It is not as inspiring as Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem And to Fall in Love with Poetry or as concise and consistently thoughtful as Mary Oliver’s two poetry handbooks, but it will inform and provoke engagement.

[Mishehu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book packs a lot of information on poetry. The choicer bits (much of the book's expanse) give some sense of the quoted poets' intent. (Since poetry can often seem so obscure, this sort of guidance is well taken by this sort of reader.) Those bits -- the last chapters -- that focus exclusively on the more analytic aspects of poetic form (meter, scansion, etc.) I found much less interesting since they had nothing to say about content and I was, alas, frequently perplexed by the quoted poems (not the author's exposition). In all, though, this is a fine read. I'm only beginning to find my way in the world of poetry -- after an impossible lag since my school-days' part-immersion in it. There is, of course, no substitute for simply reading poetry. But I do find that my pleasure in poetry, at present, is greatly augmented by a critical accompaniment. How to Read a Poem is not a rigorous critical treatment. But as non-rigorous, relatively short/quick-reading treatments go, it fills a useful niche for a novice.

[Fred Daly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I foud this semi-useful. The method is a description of some element of poetry, followed by examples with brief and smoetimes snarky commentary. At times the commentary felt too pedantic, as when he laboriously details every occurrence of alliteration or rhyme in a poem without explaining what the effect is.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the early sections of the book, where Raffel addresses things like poetic meaning, metaphor, and some techniques used in poems. The tail end of the book, which deals in shapes and structures, felt much too light in comparison.

[Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I now know how to read a poem.

[Tess Mueggenborg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a trilling read...though a book about poetry isn't really supposed to be thrilling, so that's not a genuine issue. In the realm of books about poetry, this is the cream of the crop. It's well-written (accessible to the poetry novice but still interesting and revealing to those experienced with poetry), well-organized (easy to jump amongst chapters and topics and interest and need dictate), and the poems are well-chosen (balance of classical canon and contemporary/modern poetry). So...why the four stars, and not five? The chapter on meter: I think it's wrong. Well, perhaps not wrong, but mistaken and lacking. The author posits that there are only four metrical feet in English poetry, and that every metrical foot can have on and only one stressed syllable...and then proceeds to acknowledge the difficulty of certain feet that appear to have two equally-stressed syllables. According to the text, one must simply choose which of the two syllables should be more stressed, and that this is a judgment call on the part of the reader. Which would be true, if not for the Greek-provided foot of the "spondee," which is a metrical foot of two stressed syllables. There are quite a number of metrical feet originating in Greek poetry which are useful in metrical analysis of English poetry, none of which are acknowledged in this book. So read this book...except for the chapter on meter.

[Dave Maddock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This pairs well with Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book. Raffel uses an inductive approach to introduce the reader to the art of poetry. That is, he does not spend much time explaining concepts, but teaches by example.

He gives a short poem, then shows how the concept is being used by the poet. The approach works very well, except for the sections on "balance" and "precision." The lesson I drew from those sections is that they are like pornography: you know it when you see it. Not only is it a good didactic method, but it also exposes the reader to 200+ poems by the end of the book so one gets a taste of a range of poets, styles, and time periods.

[Peter Mulholland · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book by a man who has spent a lifetime thinking not only about the craft of poetry but also about how poems think. No other book has taught me more about poetic language and communication. I find that I can return to this book time and time again and still gain new insights.

[Carolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an older book which I think still has a lot of validity and makes interesting points about what poetry does and how we can go about trying to interpret it. Explicates traditional and contemporary poetry and various techniques, etc.

[Sonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped make up for the fact that I never took a proper English/literature class in college. Friendly little book with wide selection of poems to learn how to read.

[Jackie]

Abandoned it :/

[Joe Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview, but nothing too shocking.

[Dean Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

A beautiful guide to the enjoyment of poetry which offers both pleasure as its effect and cause.