For all of you in AP English right now, this article will be very relevant as we are in the poetry unit. Poetry is a form of literary art where language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in order to convey its intended meaning. The question I pose to all you readers is: should poetry be part of our curriculum?
After a healthy dose of thinking, I concluded poetry should not be as emphasized as much as it is now. It deserves to be taught and explored in the classroom, but certainly not to the degree to which it is now. Anything in a subject's curriculum must contain objectivity. Why? Without objectivity, standards cannot be set and grades cannot be given. Poetry is far too subjective (except for vocabulary terms). Evaluations of our poems or interpretations cannot be fully grounded in objectivity, but we are still graded on them.
Poets write as freely as they please. They can experiment with structure, jumble around with words, or even break the rules of grammar. Poets tend to also cloud their poems' meanings with ambiguity. And from what I've seen from our English classes, vague poems somehow receive the most praise. With such an infinite number of ways to write a poem, how can we as students be expected to analyze any poem and find its meaning in essay form so easily? Just because you understand one poem does not mean you will understand another. Understanding a poem is in itself almost impossible. An understanding of a poem does not exist, because each person can understand a poem differently.
Don't get me wrong, I love poetry. I saw firsthand during poetry slams and our recent poetry cafe how beautiful poetry is. It allows poets to truly express their emotions free from the rules of grammar or formatting. An emotion or idea does not exist in MLA format or in grammatically-correct way, so why should it be expressed in that way? Emotions should be shown and evoked, and poetry is a wonderful way to do so.
I believe poetry is something to be enjoyed. It should be performed so that the audience can experience its meaning and be moved. The beauty of poetry can be introduced and explored in the classroom, of course. English teachers definitely know the wonders of poetry more than anyone. But to be required to analyze it so deeply and academically robs poetry of its beauty and frustrates both teachers and students alike.
8 comments:
To some extent it may be valuable to learn how to analyze a piece of poetry because you can then see various literary devices in action and how the literary device supports the "author's purpose." While poetry should still be part of the curriculum, I think it should be taught differently. We shouldn't focus on how to analyze poetry and how to dissect the poem on all the levels from the extended metaphor to the stressed and unstressed syllables. Instead, we should learn more about the different genres of poetry and really enjoy different styles of poetry that exposes us to the beauty, creativity, and emotion of poetry. By having students dissect poems, the poems are no longer retain their aesthetic qualities because students focus too much on trying to find meaning in the poem.
Poetry should be enjoyed as a whole rather than in reassembled bits and pieces.
As Archibald MacLeish said in "Ars Poetica," "A poem should not mean/but be."
Many brilliant authors of books will realize
Their work is twisted from their intent
By English students, who overanalyze
And read into them things that were never meant.
How much more so with the art of poetry
That aims the word and meaning to transcend
To speak to the spirit and set it free
With whispers the mind cannot comprehend.
What depths of riches do we fail to find
When we search with plumbs of law and rule?
How can the language of the soul be heard by mind
When veils of mist and smoke the senses fool?
Truly our eyes will be opened and the beauty see
When we learn a poem does not mean, but be.
In short, I totally agree with both Jesvin and Andrea, but I would add that the same thing often goes on with the novels that we read in English class as well. Overanalysis will kill the intent of any good work of literature, and I’ve read of at least one author who has testified that the most brilliant of English majors simply get the analysis of their work completely wrong. Analysis is overemphasized in English class in general, and not just in poetry.
That being said, I have to get back to work on my poetry analysis essay… :P
I agree with everyone on this one; I think that poetry analysis in English class goes over the top. Time in class spent on poetry should be about learning and enjoying the great poetry that surrounds us. We should be exposed not to a few poems extensively analyzed but dozens read and enjoyed. Unless one plans to be an English major, poetry ought to be something read and enjoyed on a regular basis, not excessively analyzed.
I'm going to dissent. I once wrote some lines about this exact topic which I'll post if I can find it, as I was frustrated by the same things several of you have been. But as I got to be a better reader and writer of poetry, I came to believe that my former whiny self had been primarily frustrated by being wrong.
You see, reading comprehension is my thing in life. I loved reading as a child. I crushed all the reading comprehension assessments I ever took.
But poetry was harder, and I became frustrated when I came to class and was told that my interpretation was missing the boat. I'm argumentative, I could justify my interpretation, but in the end I lost the argument(s) because, well, frankly I didn't know what I was talking about, not that I admitted it at the time.
Some poetry is experiential or impressionistic, but not all, and that which is doesn't always stand the test of time. For every William Carlos Williams or Allen Ginsberg, there are 10000 failed comp lit majors waiting tables in New York hoping to score an internship at a artsy publishing house. And those poet's most famous works aren't really their best, IMO, just the most accessible to a general audience.
Sit back and enjoy is all fine and good but one point of a classic education should be to understand that which has hidden layers and subtle complexity. Some poetry is dense and packed with allusions, like Ezra Pound. Pound can be both super cool with his language and also an act of intellectual masturbation, but there is craft there, craft that you can't appreciate without a close reading. And even a smart, motivated reader can miss something and come to class and get defensive when presented with a much more compelling and thoughtful understanding.
It is possible to close read something and not see the forest for the trees, but it is also possible to read casually and uncritically and miss a lot of meaning and half the beauty: not the beauty of the language, but the beauty of the craft.
Poetry requires more patience, more education, and more humility than prose. Maybe your English teacher(s) have grown too comfortable about what they were taught or came to believe about certain works, but probably they are reflecting consensus opinion of people far more learned than any of us at Aragon.
Poetry, especially poetry with a prominent place in literary history, is often rooted in intellectual paradigms specific to the context of their creation, including the author, time period, and subject, much of which is opaque to students. It is super annoying to come up with an interpretation of something only to find out it isn't valid because of some biographical detail about the poet or author not disclosed in the text, but that doesn't mean the biographical context isn't fundamental to understanding the piece.
Put another way, the supposed ambiguity of poetry is overstated, and struggling with semi-valid interpretations is healthy, if occasionally frustrating. Methinks you ought to have some more trust in your guides.
While I do find it annoying to have to analyze poetry, I think it has some pros to it, I have found that when analyzing poetry this year and last year in english, it really had changed my writing habits from a litarary point of view. Meaning, I read over something critically rather than just reading the passage just for the sake of reading it. I find it is easiest to expose us to everything within poetry as a poem can really be about anything.
While it has some pros, I find that analyzing poetry is open to interpretation, allowing a wide range of view points. When we are forced to analyze poetry and a deeper level, I find that it takes the beauty and simplicity out of reading a poem just for pleasure.
I agree with Mr. Silton in that understanding the context of the literary work is key to understanding the symbols/ meaning of the work. For example, for those of you that read Death of a Salesman, it would have been a very confusing and misleading book if we did not have the prior understanding of the context of post WWII.
I also agree that analyzing poetry makes you a more critical reader. However, I also agree that poetry and novels can be "over analyzed". Teachers and scholars can easily go too far when analyzing a work. Saying that Green Eggs in Hams teaches a lesson about trying new things is one thing, but saying that the story is about white peoples' unwillingless to accept other races might just be going too far. This analysis really does not teach any lessons you can't learn from reading a history textbook and it simply ruins everyone's favorite Dr. Suess book.
I understand what you're feeling here, Jesvin, and I agree with some of it. I don't think, for example, that we should be graded on how well we write our own poems or how well we interpret the poetry of others. Yet I am glad we have it in the curriculum. I do think poetry is very subjective, yet I think getting graded for things like completion of an assignment rather than how accurate it was, is alright.
I also don't mind, as Andrea said, the picking apart of poems. I do agree, that it would be nice to read a whole poem in its entirety, yet I think learning to identify the rhyme scheme in poetry, or to identify the stressed and unstressed syllables is something that is important in analyzing some poetry. I say some because I don't think it crucial or even that necessary to be able to enjoy a poem without the skills of scansion, etc. However, I do think that understanding the poem on a deeper level does require a lot of picking apart.
I'm glad that we do have poetry in our curriculum because I don't think many people would be exposed to it if we didn't. I also think it's healthy to have subjective things in a classroom, otherwise it would just be teachers telling us what was right and true, without us debating or discovering our own opinions. I think poetry is a nice way to bring in subjectivity into a classroom, as people can talk about the different ways it makes them feel, and that sort of thing.
Like I said, I do see where you're coming from, but I disagree with your opinions on total objectivity and ideas to decrease the amount of poetry taught in classrooms.
-Alice Bebbington
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