How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

“Poetry uses language to take us to a place beyond language.”

Foster introduces the idea that poetry uses its composite words to suggest concepts beyond the immediate meaning of the language. While all language is metaphorical in that it is comprised of signifiers that convey a meaning beyond the word, poetry with its employment of symbolism uses language to help us travel even further from the mundane realm. Foster uses this quote to appeal to the reader’s sense of wonder.

“I want you to keep in mind something most people intuit even if they can’t articulate it: Reading poetry requires more than just your brain. Writing poetry is a full-contact activity; so, too, must we bring our entire being to bear on the act of reading it. That is certainly a part of the intimidation that we may feel when we launch into a book of poems, the sense that demands being made on us are of a different order than those made by our other reading.”

In arguing for an embodied as opposed to cerebral experience of poetry, Foster indicates the immersive, holistically transformative capacity of the genre and its capacity to impact us emotionally as well as intellectually. Thus, the reader will be going on a bigger journey than they may initially think. In stating that readers already have an instinct for the embodied nature of poetry, Foster gives them confidence that their instincts about this genre are right and that they ought to lean into them.

“A poem is an act of written communication. Like almost all such acts, it is written in sentences. I can’t stress this enough: virtually all poems are written in sentences […] which are the basic unit of meaning in the mother tongue. So there is a policy to follow: read the sentences.”

Foster introduces the fact that poems are written in sentences as though it is a revelation. This is because readers are so intimidated by the baroque line forms that they forget that poems are written in the same units of meaning as prose. The idea that a poem is “an act of written communication” also lowers the reader’s defenses, as it conveys the notion that the poem, like any other text, wants to be understood.

“In order to get anywhere with this consideration of sound, we need a divorce. If this were a discussion of music, we could easily effect a separation between the melody and the lyrics. But when the source of the musicality is also the source of meaning, matters become trickier. The words contain the melody, the harmony, the counterpoint. So we have to push past words to their constituent sounds.”

Foster uses the easily intelligible metaphor of the difference between melody and lyrics in music to divorce sound from meaning on the level of an individual word. The metaphorical divorce suggests a humorous and painful rupture between two concepts that we automatically marry–the meaning of words and their sounds. It implies that to truly understand poetry we must take a counterintuitive approach.

“If […] we understand the writing of a poem as a sort of exploration where the artifact produced is both the record of that exploration and the act of exploring, then we begin to understand that writing a poem is a struggle with, in, and through language.”

Foster reveals the simultaneous nature of poetry, which explores both an intellectual idea and the formal considerations for expressing that idea. Thus, more than any other literary genre, poetry is concerned with the fundamental tools of language. The idea of a struggle refers to the fact that words do not directly correspond to meaning and have a life and sentience of their own beyond the poet’s expression.

“For most of its history, poetry in English has been built on a foundation of lines that in turn are built out of words arranged to form rhythmic patterns. These patterns can—and often do—find their way into songs. And once we know the basic patterns, we have only to count how often they repeat in a line to name it.”

Foster here conveys the building blocks of poetry in the English language. The idea that one can search for rhythmic patterns in verse is empowering, as it gives us a tangible means for beginning to appreciate and understand poetry.

“Having learned to find the stresses, IGNORE THEM. Read poems as naturally as you can. Stresses will make themselves known without any outside assistance. Every poem has its own rhythm and its own melody. Don’t bang the drum. Listen for the music.”

Having introduced the reader to the concept of meter, Foster retracts to say that this pedantic approach to counting syllables may interfere with the instinctive capacity to listen for the rhythm and melody of the words. The metaphor of banging the drum indicates trying too hard while listening for the music indicates the mystical way that poetry works upon the reader and makes its form and meaning known to them.

“How poets reach their own rhythmic signatures is always a story unique to them, and we readers respond to both the journey and the arrival.”

After describing two different poets’ journeys toward rhythm, Foster invites the reader to appreciate the diversity of their paths, which are visible in the poetry. The term “rhythmic signature” implicitly compares poets to drummers, who also have an idiosyncratic grasp on the beat in their creative work. Overall, it makes the tools of poetry seem uniquely crafted.

“We should understand, rather, that there is (or should be) a reason for choosing to either end-stop or enjamb a line, and that there are always consequences connected with that choice, whatever it is.”

The subject of the poetic line is often a confusing one for the reader, especially given that poets can choose to let the natural clause stop at the end of the line or allow it to run into the next one. However, Foster invites us to pay attention to this choice, as it is not random and aesthetic but something that contributes to the poem’s meaning.

“And you know what the problem is with words? Poetry doesn’t own them. There is no privileged language of poetry—or any literature for that matter—so poets have to make do with language that has been debased and devalued by many kinds of use and abuse.”

The idea that the elite literary form of poetry is made up of the recycled and repurposed words of everyday language takes it off its intimidating pedestal. However, Foster also conveys the difficulty of creating anything good and original from words that have already been used, and even misused, countless times.

“Before we leave this passage, it would be unfair not to admit that it is a whole lot of fun to say, even if you stumble. Maybe because you stumble. Stumbling is half the fun. Therein lies the secret to Cummings’s charm: he leaves you baffled but smiling.”

After exposing the reader directly to the confusing delights of an E. E. Cummings poem, Foster challenges them to admit that the tongue-twisting difficulty of the poem forms part of their enjoyment. The repetition of the word “stumble,” an onomatopoeic trochee that conveys a feeling of bumbling awkwardness, indicates a mood of pleasant challenge while the phrase “baffled but smiling” introduces the contradictory idea that being in a state of ambiguity can be fun and pleasant. This is the attitude the reader must employ if they are to enjoy poetry.

“What we learn from blank verse, ultimately, is that rhyme is not poetry. It is an option, in English at least, although not in all other languages. Not only that, it was there first. The moment Old English gave way to that blend of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French that would become our language, rhymes found their way into our poetry.”

Foster argues that the presence of blank verse, which follows all the conventions of rhymed poetry apart from the rhyme itself, is evidence that poetry exists outside of the rhyming that many people associate with. He seeks to further enlighten the reader about rhyme being a secondary consideration in English poetry by framing it as an import from England’s French invaders. This makes rhyme an arbitrary rather than an intrinsic feature of English poetry.

“A poem is not a true document but rather an imaginative utterance. And the imaginative part extends to the personage who utters it. When we assume that said personage is the Poet […] we run the risk of missing the point.”

The idea of a poem as an act of imagination prefaces Foster’s argument that a poem’s narrator is not the same person as its author. We should not automatically assume that the poet is divulging the contents of their own thoughts and emotions but rather that they have created a persona who does so. Foster emphasizes that the creation of this persona is part of the poet’s imaginative design, and to ignore this would be to misinterpret their work.

“The poet’s voice is a powerful instrument, but much more powerful is the poem’s voice.”

Foster argues that instead of chasing the intentions of a poet who is absent at the time of our reading, we would do better to pay attention to what the poem says to us in the moment. After all, poetry gains its power from our reading of it in the present, rather than from the history of its creation.

“One of those old French thinkers, Blaise Pascal, I think, apologized for writing such a long letter, saying, ‘I had no time to write a short one.’ Sonnets are like that, short poems that take far more time, because everything has to be perfect, than long ones.”

Using the humorous example of Blaise Pascal writing a long letter because he did not have time for a concise one, Foster reverses the popular notion that the longer the work, the more time-consuming it is. This is the case with the meticulous sonnet form, which allows no room for imperfection. One can imagine poets laboring away at this form, crafting sonnet after sonnet until they reach a near perfect expression of the form.

“It’s not the form that’s tough; it’s the compression. What can you say in so small a space, and how well can you say it? There is a structure, but a haiku isn’t a house, it’s a crystal.”

The metaphor of haiku as luminous crystal rather than a house indicates Foster’s expectation that this compressed poem enlightens the reader with some profound comment about the human condition. He thus enables us to appreciate the difficulty of the haiku poet’s task, which is not only to select the right number of syllables but to make those syllables say something worth hearing.

“It is important, however, to note that she is doing this irregular thing in the service of play and humor; she does it because it’s funny. And after all, why expend all that energy to come up with something new if it doesn’t please you.”

Foster emphasizes that formal experimentation is in the service of play and pleasure. Thus, while the poetry student may be intimidated by baroque stanza forms and ascribe all sorts of serious intent to them, the poet’s instinct is often the far lighter one of pleasing and amusing.

“Whatever the size and shape and arrangements of lines in free verse poems, the writer shapes, limits, and controls what she can say with every decision she makes. We do a disservice if we fail to notice those decisions or if we read the result as mere prose that has been chopped into lines.”

Foster anticipates that the student of poetry can be baffled by free verse, which at first glance does not employ the techniques of closed-form poetry. However, he reminds them that they are still dealing with poetry and that the line formation has been consciously chosen by the poet and merits being attended to.

“Quality in poetry is never a reflection of the chosen form. It’s far easier to write a lousy sonnet than a great one, and lousy is all most of us could ever achieve.”

Foster seeks to definitively reject the idea that certain poetic forms are of a higher quality than others. Even the sonnet, with its meticulous rules, can be written badly. He instead conveys that writing any type of good poem is hard, and in the idea that “most of us” could only ever achieve a low standard, he makes good poetry the province of the elite and gifted.

“Each of those symbols points beyond its specific identity toward some more universal condition and hints at a small constellation of possible meanings.”

Foster argues that there is no avoiding ambiguity when it comes to the interpretations of the symbols in poetry. Referring in this case to the natural imagery of Robert Frost, Foster points out the potential for inconsistency of intention and interpretation even in the work of a single poet.

“Own your reading. It won’t be quite like anyone else’s, but that’s okay. In fact, more than okay.”

Foster encourages the reader to take ownership of their interpretation rather than searching around for the correct way of reading a poem. The idea that idiosyncratic readings are “more than okay” indicate that they enrich our creativity and understanding of the work.

“Songs have always used poetry. The terms ‘verse’ and ‘chorus’ are impossible to disentangle from their poetic origins. ‘Verse’ comes from the Latin ‘versus,’ which means ‘against’ or ‘to turn,’ and was related to the act of plowing a field, where one turned at the end of each furrow.”

Foster parallels the elite form of poetry with the more everyday form of song. He posits that the structure of songs is indistinguishable from that of poetry, given that they are composed of the same parts. The etymology of verse, which hails from the Latin term for the turning of a plow in the field, relates to the idea of movement and progression common to both poetry and song.

“In general, this defamiliarization splits in two main ways: seeing things differently and saying things differently. Both paths are legitimate responses to Ezra Pound’s dictum, ‘Make it new.’ Nor are they unrelated. Poets who would teach us to see anew must find language appropriate to the challenge.”

Following the dictum of Imagist poet Ezra Pound, poetry’s challenge to the reader’s indifference is to appear new. This can occur on the level of diction or ideas. However, regardless of the boldness of a poet’s vision, they are still tasked with finding the language that can communicate it, as words remain the poet’s primary concern.