How to Read Poetry

• What Is Poetry? 
1. Poetry is "a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language" (Perrine's 717).
2. Poetry is a performance of language
3. Poetry is participation in experience through the vision and words of another that both broadens and deepens our experience (Perrine's 720).

• How to Read a Poem (from Perrine's)
1. Read a poem more than once.
2. Use a dictionary (and a Bible and handbook of mythology).
3. Hear how the poem sounds.
4. Pay attention to what the poem is saying.
5. Practice reading poems aloud.
6. Paraphrase (restate the meaning in non-poetic language) the poem.

• Some questions to ask and answer (from Perrine's)
1. Who is the speaker? (the character(s) talking)
2. What is the occasion? (what is happening?)
3. What is the central purpose of the poem? (sometimes called the "theme")
4. By what means is that purpose achieved?

Perrine's closing comment about poetry's purpose: "Its purpose is not to soothe and relax but to arouse and awake, to shock us into life, to make us more alive"