Poetry: Re-Reading Strategies and Questions

Exploring the text

  • Read the poem slowly and "outloud" several times
  • Look up any words you are unsure about, noting different meanings, synonyms, antonyms, linguistic roots as relevant.
  • Look up allusions you don't know (such as references to classical mythology or the Bible
  • Note any images in the poem and experience them in sensory as well as intellectual terms

    • Exploring patterns

  • What is the metrical pattern(s) of the poem? Where are there breaks in the pattern?
  • Are there any repeated words, phrases, or images?
  • Does the poem rhyme? Is it a regular rhyme scheme? Are there any approximate or off-rhymes?

    • Questioning the text

  • Where are the gaps or ambiguities of syntax or meaning in the poem?
  • Are there any hints of a subtext which conflicts or questions the surface text?

    • Exploring the author's and work's general repertoire

  • What do you know about the author and the personal conditions under which he/she wrote? What can you deduce from the poem?
  • How do you think age, gender, race, social or financial status of the author might be relevant to the poem?
  • What else do you know about the time, the place, and social, cultural, and/or political conditions of the work? Which of these might be relevant to this particular text?

    • Exploring the author's and work's literary repertoire

  • What are the literary conventions and expectations of the time which affect this work in terms of genre and form, rhetorical strategies, imagery, meter (or lack of it), etc.
  • Do you know any other works by this author? If so, what patterns and ideas seem to recur in those works that you think may be in this one?

    • Matching up your own personal, literary, and general repertoires

  • What expectations do you have for the genre and the subject represented by this poem? How does it meet or disappoint those expectations?
  • How do your relevant personal experiences (as recorded in your free association) match or clash with those suggested in the poem? Are they so strong that they might block your ability to respond to the poem?
  • What differences (from the author) in age, race, gender, social or political status, etc. might color and shape your reading of this poem?
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