Good web sources for examples of close readings of poems:
http://lemonhound.blogspot.ca/p/how-poems-work.html
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/close-reading-i-cannot-live-you
Remember that the Holbrook text is filled with close reading! Read it carefully!
Handout on Close Reading
Purpose: To read the language of the text very closely so that you better understand its multiple layers of meaning as you move toward an interpretation of the poem.
The actual essay requires you to articulate, prove and develop a clear argument and ensuing analysis in which you pay really close attention to the language of the text.
What is close reading?
Close reading means reading to uncover layers of meaning that lead to deep comprehension.
When you read a text closely, you ask all kinds of questions: what do these words mean? What is happening in the form and the formal qualities of the language that is intriguing, meaningful, important? What kind of problems does the text present? What kinds of questions does the text ask? What does the text mean?
The labour of close readings happens in a few steps:
You read with a pencil in hand and annotate the text.
You answer some of the prompts/questions listed below. That is, you make observations about the text and gather facts. You may indeed have to look words up.
You look for patterns in the things you notice about the text—repetitions, contradictions, similarities.
You are being trained to be a skilled reader, even a metacognitive one in that you ask questions about what you think you know and think about how the text thinks or prompts thinking in you. Ask questions about the patterns you’ve noticed—especially how and why. We reason toward our own ideas by making observations, gathering evidence, asking questions, gathering more evidence, hypothesizing, revising, etc. We pay close attention to the evidence (the poem); we ask questions; we formulate interpretations.
Using your Looking Glass to Observe Facts and Details about the Text
Reading Poetry
Genre and Form: What do you notice about form and structure? Is the poem written in a traditional form, such as the sonnet or villanelle? Or is it a free verse poem? Which formal elements does it employ most strikingly? How does it occupy its page? Is the poem of a particular genre (lyric, narrative, concrete, conceptual)? What are its conventions? If it doesn’t fit particular genre, how would you describe its form?
What is the relationship between form and meaning in the poem? Are there clear parts to the poem, and if so, how are they similar/different?
Vocabulary and Diction: Which words do you notice first? Why? What is noteworthy about this diction? How do the important words relate to one another? Do any words seem oddly used to you? Why? Do any words carry non-contemporary or unfamiliar meanings?
Do any words have double meanings? Do they have extra connotations? Do repeated words carry the same meaning when repeated, or do they change? Words often gather or evolve in meaning when repeated.
Do particular words or phrases seem drawn to or connected with each other? These often add up so that a clearer sense of the poem emerges. Do you notice lots of material or immaterial things (nouns) or lots of action (verbs)? Is the poem concrete, about specific things and places, or is the poem more abstract, about concepts or ideas? Is the poem full of movement, or does it seem to stay still and look at one thing? Do you read irony, ambivalence or ambiguity in particular words, phrases or lines? If so, makes notes! Do certain words seem to clash with each other, and what effect does this have? Think in terms of oppositions, tensions, conflicts, and binaries.
Look up any unfamiliar words. For a pre-20th century text, look in the Oxford English Dictionary for possible outdated meanings. (The OED can be accessed by UBC students on the library site.)
Syntax: Does the poet write in complete sentences? What kinds of sentences? Is conventional syntax disrupted: if so, how? Does the poet write in fragments? Is the syntax—the order of the words in the sentence or line—conventional, unusual, jarring, awkward, easy, complex, etc.?
Poetic Line: How are the sentences/fragments/lines organized and arranged on the page to make the poem move, guide the reader, control speed/pace of the poem? How does the poet use the line? How does the poet manipulate the syntax of the sentences line by line? Do the lines have strong end-stops, or do they break across lines (enjamb)? Are the lines filled with caesuras? Do the lines end with a final stress or rhyme? Does each line tend to be a self-contained, grammatical unit, or does it vary? What effect does this have? Pay attention to the first and last lines. Are they effective? What is their effect? (Regarding prose poems, substitute “sentence” for “line.”) Are there lots of long, complete sentences (simple or complex?), or are there many sentence fragments and phrases? Does the poem stop and start, or does it move continuously? What is the effect of this?
Punctuation and Grammar: Punctuation organizes and creates relationship between words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. In poetry, where lines are often seen as units of meaning, the importance of punctuation is sometimes magnified, though often overlooked. Punctuation can create or reinforce rhythm. It can also control meaning or make meaning uncertain by its placement and usage, especially if it is used minimally, or in some cases, not at all.
Is the poem punctuated? If so, how does the punctuation function in/serve the poem? If not, what is the effect of missing punctuation? (Often the effect of punctuation, or lack of, is both formal and thematic.) Is the poem’s grammar deliberately odd or incorrect?
Speaker/Addressee: All poems have a voice, which can be called a speaker or speakers (if multiple speaking voices have been created by the poet).
Who speaks in the poem? Who is speaking to whom and toward what end? Are there things you can say about the speaker’s personality, point of view, tone, society, age, or gender? Does the speaker assume a persona at any point in the poem, and speak “as” a particular person (e.g., “I am Lazarus, come from the dead . . . I shall tell you all”)?
Does the speaker seem attached or detached from what is said? What effect do the speaker’s characteristics have on the poem?
Narrative/Narrator. Poems capture thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions, experiences, and incidents, but sometimes poems also tell a story. Ask yourself: What is happening in the poem? What action, drama, or conflict is present? Is there more than one event in the poem? Does anything change in the poem (is an action completed, does an attempted action fail, or does someone change in an important way)? Who tells the story, and what relatioship does the narrator have to the story?
Voice: Describe the speaking voice or voices in the poem. Is it intimate, detached, intellectual, philosophical, neurotic, etc.? Who is speaking and toward what end? How does the poet create the voice(s)?
Tone: What is the attitude taken by the “voice” of the poem toward the subjects of the poem? Are there major shifts in tone or is the tone fairly constant? Note shifts in tone and describe those shifts. Is the tone obviously theatrical? Is it dialectical? Dialogical? Is there a complicated tonal plot or a relatively stable one? Review the definitions for these kinds of tone. Remember that just because tone shifts in a poem doesn’t mean that it’s dialectical.
Images: What imagery—pictures or senses that are evoked in words—is present in the poem? What imagery, if any, is most striking, frequent, or patterned? What images seem related or connected to each other? What mood or atmosphere is created by the imagery? Which details stand out? Why? What sense (if any) seems to dominate the poem: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell?
Symbolism/Figurative Language: A symbol represents or stands for something other than the image itself. A symbol, then, is often something concrete—a word, a thing, a place, a person (real of fictitious), an action, an event, a creation, etc.—that represents something larger, abstract, or complex—an idea, a value, a belief, an emotion. A river (a thing) can be symbol for life; Gomorrah (a place) can be a symbol of shameless sin; Homer Simpson (a fictitious person) can be a symbol of innocent stupidity.
Does the poem contain metaphors? What kinds? Is there one controlling metaphor? If not, how many different metaphors are there, and in what order do they occur? How might that be significant? How might objects represent something else? Do any of the objects, colors, animals, or plants appearing in the passage have traditional connotations or meaning? What about religious or biblical significance? If there are multiple symbols in the work, is it possible to read the entire passage as having allegorical meaning beyond the literal level?
Allusion: Poetry sometimes contains brief references to things outside itself—a person, place, or thing—that will expand, clarify, or complicate its meaning. Sometimes they are obvious and direct, and sometimes they are subtle, indirect, and debatable. Allusions are frequently references made to other texts (for example, to the Bible, or to another poem).
What allusions, if any, can you detect? What effect do the allusions have upon the poem? If it is a literary allusion, how does it relate to or connect with the original text?
Sound: What do you notice about sound in the poem? Do particular kinds of sounds recur or form a pattern? Do particular sounds or patterns of sound play off of each other? Is there a discernible meter or rhyme scheme? Can you hear particular sound patterns such as internal rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, cacophony, euphony? What words are drawn to each other because of sound, and how does this influence meaning? What tone do these sounds create (quiet, loud, sensual, aggressive, etc.)?
How do the poem’s sounds contribute to its meaning? Does a particular sound or sounds dominate the poem? What is the effect of this?
Rhythm: When you count out (scan) the syllables of a line, do they follow a rhythm? Is there a name for it? How prominent is the poem’s rhythm? Does the rhythm have any influence on the poem’s meaning? If so, in what way or ways?
Time/Setting: What is the temporal structure of the poem? Does it take place in one time (the present, the past, the future) or does it move back and forth between times? Does it present single actions in time or continuing actions? Does it bring different times together or set them apart (e.g., “then” vs. “now”)? Is there a particular occasion for the poem (an incident, an event, a realization)? Does it focus on indicative states (“I am, I will be”) or conditional states (“I could be, I would be”)? Are different parts of the poem located in different times? Does time move smoothly? Are different states of being, or different ways of thinking, associated with different times? (“I used to think ‘X’, but now I think ‘Y’”)?
Setting answers the questions “Where?” and “When?” in the poem, though often poems are not set in a specific location or time. Is a sense of place clear (urban, pastoral, forest, desert, beach, etc.), or does the poem seem to occupy an abstract time and place (such as mental or emotional state)? For some poems, a difficult but key question may be this: Where are we?
Elements of Fiction (some of which may be helpful for reading a poem!)
Plot: What happens? What is the action of the story? Why does it happen—that is, what I the cause-and-effect relationship between the events? Is there a conflict between the protagonist and one or more antagonists, or between the protagonist and the culture or cultural ideology of the text? What is the shape of the plot? What is the series of events in the plot? Can you divide the story into an opening, complications, climax and
denouement? Is there a climax—a moment of crisis or discovery? Is the plot told in time order or does it follow a less predictable order? How does
the choice of order affect the impact and meaning of the story? How would the impact of the story change if you changed the order of events? How would the impact of the story change if an event was left out or changed?
Point of View: What is the angle of narration? Who is telling the story? Is it being told by an “I”, a first-person narrator? Is the narrator trustworthy? Is that narrator the protagonist, or a secondary character, or perhaps a detached observer? Is the story told from a third-person pov? Is the narrator omniscient (knows thought and feelings of all characters)? Limited omniscient (knows only the thoughts and feelings of one or a few characters)? Self-effaced (simply reports events)? Why do you think the author chose this point of view? How does the choice of
point of view affect the meaning of the story?
Setting: The setting includes the physical and social environment as well as the historical time of the novel. What is the significance of the place and time for the ideas in the story? Does the author create a strong sense of place? How? How do the settings in the story relate to the characters and the plot of the
story? (For example, does a character’s home give you insights into the
character?) How would the story be different if you removed descriptions of time and
place? How would the story be different if you changed the time and place? Are there any significant social, economic, or psychological circumstances surrounding the action?
Character: Who are the characters? What kind of people are they? Who is the protagonist, or main character? Which characters change during the story? How are the characters made known to us—that is, what methods of characterization are used? Straightforward description and statement? Self-revelation, through other statements or actions? Do we get to know the characters through what others say or think about them? What does the person say and so? What kind of language does the person use? What does this tell us about their attitudes, values and motivation? What are the relationships like between the characters, especially the main ones? What choices does the character make? How does the character change? What conflicts does the character experience? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the character? A character is defined by appearance, behaviour, emotions, intellect, values and morals.
Symbolism: The author uses a symbol when he or she uses something (often a concrete object) to represent something else (often an abstract idea or emotion). Writers generally use symbols to express multiple meanings. They can be literal, cultural and/or context-specific.
What is the literal meaning of the word or object? What characteristics does that object have? What other meanings does the word have? Look it up in a dictionary. Does the object have symbolic meaning in the culture of the author or the culture
of the setting? Is this symbol used repeatedly through the story, or does it just occur once? What ideas does the story give you about possible meanings the author may
include in the use of the symbol? Notice above in the Urquhart example that, even in this short segment, the author gives indications that a cloak is not necessarily a good thing, that it can relate to dependency and that she doesn’t always want it anymore. Are other related symbols used? For example, are various foods used to symbolize different things or are objects in nature used as symbols repeatedly?
Irony: Irony occurs when there is a surprising or meaningful difference between what seems to be true and what is really true or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens. Sometimes the irony is clear to characters; other times the irony is only clear to the reader.
Verbal irony occurs when there’s a gap between what a speaker says and what a speaker means.
Situational irony occurs when there’s a gap between what a readers hopes or expects will happen and what actually happens.
Dramatic irony occurs when there’s gap between what the audience knows and what the characters know.
Foreshadowing:
Foreshadowing happens when an author gives hints earlier in a story about what is going to happen later in the story. Hints can be in things people say, think or do, or they can be in the setting, characters, events, descriptions or even titles, chapter headings or graphics.
Readers sometimes recognize foreshadowing when they first read a story but often the foreshadowing is not fully apparent until the reader gets to the part of the story that has been foreshadowed. Then readers often remember things from earlier in the story that hinted at what was to come. Frequently, when a reader gets to the foreshadowed part, it is not entirely a surprise. The foreshadowing has prepared the reader for what happens.
Foreshadowing can create suspense, tension, excitement or fear. It can add importance to events. It can also subtly introduce underlying meanings or establish key aspects of character and setting
Interpreting Your Observations + Moving Toward Critical Assessment
What you are doing when you move from annotating a text, to answering questions and gathering notes and observations, to formulating some kind of educated guess about what the poem means is called inductive reasoning. In other words, you gather clues, observations and facts about the text in question, assess them and move toward a probable conclusion or interpretation based on those observations. You have to gather facts carefully and think about what they add up to.
Once you’ve done this, you can start to draft some critical assertions that you will support with detailed evidence from the text.
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