How to Interpret Poems

Learn Some of the Elements of Poetry

• You now know how to recognize a poem, but to effectively interpret one and know what's going on, you need to learn a little about the language of poetry--such as the elements of meter, form and diction, for example.

  Meter

  Meter is the regular rhythmic pattern of a poem. Remember, paying attention to the rhythm of words is part of what makes a poem a poem. In English, the units of rhythm are rather simple: Speech may be broken down into patterns of stressed and unstressed beats (that is, stressed and unstressed syllables). The basic unit of rhythm in a poem is the foot, consisting of either two or three of these beats. Don't worry too much about the foot. It's just cool to know.

  Now, iambic pentameter is one of the most common types of meter, or metrical schemes. The word pentameter is used because the line is broken up into five feet. An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of one unstressed beat followed by a stressed one, and is often given the notation "|u x|," where u is the unstressed beat and x the stressed one (for example, "to-DAY"). An example of how iambic pentameter is read would be:

  | i WANT| to GO | to REST | au RANT | this EVE |

  Other common types of feet are the trochee, a stressed beat followed by an unstressed one "|x u|" ("SWEET-ner"); and the spondee, two stressed beats in succession "|x x|" ("LET'S GO").

  Earlier poets were far more concerned with mete than contemporary ones. Many poets wrote almost their entire body of work in a very limited number of metrical schemes. Shakespeare, for example, wrote his sonnets and the poetic language of his plays in iambic pentameter. So when he wrote, in his ironic "anti-sonnet" (praising his beloved for everything she is not),

  "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,"

  he was using iambic pentameter.

  To demonstrate the concept of iambic pentameter, you can break this line into five feet, each with an iamb, one unstressed followed by a stressed syllable, like so (Read the line aloud and compare the stressed and unstressed syllables with the chart above them):

  |u x |u x |u x |u x |u x|

  My mis- tress' eyes are noth ing like the sun,

  Iambic pentameter is one of the most common metrical schemes in English, because

  |u x |u x |u x |u x |u x|

  it sounds the most like or- di- nar- y speech.

  However, much of 20th-century poetry has been written in a style without a carefully observed meter, called free verse. If you like, call it slacker poetry. Rules, shmules.

  Form

  The form of a poem, like the meter, is a prescribed pattern, but in fact is even stricter, often involving the meter, structure, rhyme scheme and tone of a poem. The basic unit of form is the stanza — the series of lines that follow the form before it starts over again. So think of a stanza in poetry as being like each new verse or chorus of a song. Often, a new stanza is preceded by a blank line. Even if you're not familiar with the form of the poem you're reading, a pattern will still most likely become evident as you read along.

  Certain forms of poetry have become associated with particular subject matter; so while an earlier poet like Shakespeare might use the sonnet in its conventional role as a love poem, a modern poet like W.B. Yeats could use the same form ironically, to describe the rape of Leda by Zeus, in his poem "Leda and the Swan." Poets are deep.

  Modern free-verse poetry (without regular meter) is also written in open form, meaning that the form may vary throughout the poem. You may have begun to notice that modern poets don't much like to follow a lot of rules. (Remember, however, that they do follow some rules. The stuff you scribble in your diary may have some value to you, but without some kind of discipline, it most likely really is just scribbling.)

  Common forms

  Blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, is one of the simplest forms, in that each line is essentially a new stanza. Shakespeare used blank verse for the poetry in his plays (although not for his sonnets, which were rhymed).

  A chart below shows some of the longer forms. Note that this chart is in no way complete: There are plenty of less-common forms you may run into, and a lot more information is available about these forms elsewhere. A poet may even create her own form.

  Name: Couplet

  Lines per stanza: Two

  Description: Each stanza is a rhyming pair of lines.

  Name: Triplet, tercets

  Lines per stanza: Three

  Description: Triplets have three rhymed lines, while tercets have only two.

  Name: Quatrain

  Lines per stanza: Four

  Description: The commonest form in poetry, often thought of as A-B-A-B structure.

  Name: Sestet, sestina

  Lines per stanza: Six

  Description: Sestets may form part of a longer sonnet or sestina.

  Name: Rhyme royal

  Lines per stanza: Seven

  Description: Named for James I of Scotland, who composed in that form (and got to name it, because he was the King).

  Name: Ottava rima

  Lines per stanza: Eight

  Description: Now usually reserved for comic poetry.

  Name: Spenserian stanza

  Lines per stanza: Nine

  Description: Named for the author of "The Faerie Queen."

  Name: Sonnet

  Lines per stanza: Fourteen

  Description: Commonly used in love poetry.

  Name: Villanelle

  Lines per stanza: Nineteen

  Description: A particularly tricky form, with a complex rhyme scheme.

  Diction or poetic language

  Diction refers to the language of a poem and how each word is chosen to convey a precise meaning. Poets are very deliberate in choosing each word for its particular effect, so it's important to know the origins and connotations of the words in a poem, not to mention their literal meaning, too.

  You're now asking yourself, "How am I supposed to know the history and connotation of all these obscure words?"

  No problem. Fortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary is available online. The OED is an indispensable resource for anyone who really wants to "get" a poem. If you're a student, your university library will probably have a subscription. (If you're not a student, use the tattered Pocket Webster's you've got holding up one leg of the coffee table.)

  The OED offers many definitions for each word and provides the time of their usage, so when you're reading earlier poets, you can find the meaning of a word at the time the poem was written, and avoid interpretations only a modern reader would make. The dictionary also offers a sampling of uses of the word in prominent works of literature; so where a poet is using a word to allude to a previous author's work--a common technique in poetry--you will have access to this added layer of meaning, as the previous work may help illuminate the later one.

  If you don't have access to the online version of the OED, you may wish to just purchase the latest edition of the multivolume print version to carry around with you. It should fit comfortably in the back of a mid-sized Ryder truck.