Tania Runyan - How to Read a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem Introduction to Poetry

a poem freshens the world ted kooser

t a n I a r u n y a n FG field guide series T. S. Poetry Press New York T. S. Poetry Press Ossining, New York Tspoetry.com 2014 by Tania Runyan All rights reserved. Do not reprint withoutpermission.

This book includes various references from orto the following brands & sources: The Poetry Home RepairManual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, Ted Kooser,University of Nebraska Press (2005); BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed, Inc; iPad,Apple; PowerPoint, Microsoft; Texas Flood, Im Crying, andLenny, by Stevie Ray Vaughan, from the album Texas Flood, EpicRecords (1983); Vaseline, Unilever; Big Bird, Sesame Street, SesameWorkshop. Cover image by Claire Burgeclaireburge.com ISBN 978-0-9898542-2-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData: Runyan, Tania [Nonfiction/Poetry.] How to Read a Poem: Based on the BillyCollins Poem Introduction to Poetry ISBN 978-0-9898542-2-1 Library of Congress Control Number:2013957013 for laura, who works harder at lovingpoetry than anyone I know Contents Introduction How to read a poem. A lot of books want toteach you just that. How is this one different? Think of it less as an instructional book andmore as an invitation. For the reader new to poetry, this guidewill open your senses to the combined craft and magic known aspoems. For the well versed, if you will, this book mightmake you fall in love again.

For many of us, poetry is difficult andunapproachable. Or perhaps we manage well enough, but it feels likeso much workanother academic exercise to check off our lists. If poetry requires that much effort, itcertainly doesnt feel like something to enjoy, something to curlup with by the fire (or pool). Whatever your story, Im going to try totrick you into becoming a better reader of poetry by havingfun. In this book, you will not answercomprehension questions or discuss literary terms directly. Rather,the focus will be to engage you with the poem.

Sure, you willbecome intimately entwined with alliteration, enjambment, andmetaphor, but for now, defining and memorizing terms is notimportant. Were not going on a scavenger hunt for literarydevices. Were first and foremost taking a journey todeepen your relationship with poems. This is not about findinganswers, decoding lines, or being smart. Its about payingattention to poems. And poems paying attention to you.

Youre invited on a journey. Will you RSVPyes? The Reading Soul Poetry, I have a confession to make. Im apoet, with two degrees and many editorial positions to my credit,but I dont always want to spend time with you. Unlike Facebook andTwitter, who wave their hands wildly for my attention, you sit inthe corner of the garden like that quiet, intricate columbine bythe bench. Come and read me. Not as an editor workingthrough a stack of review copies, but as you, a reading soul.

Thereis so much to talk about. Please, just shut up and take a seat. I grab my coffee and flip open my iPad. Justone more BuzzFeed article, Poetry. Then Ill read you. I know Ive complained that youre too muchwork, but its a dumb excuse.

Life without you is too muchworktrying to make meaning among all the empty words distractingme from, as Mary Oliver calls it, my one wild and preciouslife. So teach me how to spend time with you again.Lets rekindle the passion I had before I became a poetryprofessional, before I knew any better. Maybe Billy Collins can help. Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poems room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the authors name on theshore.

But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. Billy Collins, from The Apple ThatAstonished Paris Without beating Collinss well-known poem todeath (wouldnt that be ironic?), Im going to use it as afield guide for my own reading. Join me as I walk through severalpoems rooms, flip some light switches to see better how to live mywild life, and tell about it. Hold It to the Light: Imagery Billy Collinss Introduction to Poetrychallenges us not to analyze a poem, but to enter it, live with it,and make it a part of us. In this chapter, Im going to explore howCollinss first stanza can help us fall in love with poetrysdazzler: imagery.

I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide Collins tells us to hold the poem up to thelight. A younger reader may ask how exactly one can hold a largepiece of playground equipment up to the sun, but the slide in thisstanza is supposed to make us think of images. In the ancient daysbefore digital cameras and PowerPoint, people turned their photonegatives into slides to create slide shows. My best sources (um,Wikipedia writers) describe a slide as a specially mountedindividual transparency intended for projection onto a screen usinga slide projector. Color slides are small, just 22 inches, andwhen people want to see the image without a projector, they musthold it to a light source, squint a bit, turn it to get a goodlook. So how do you hold a poem up to the light?Just look at it from several angles, and dont worry about what thepoem means.

Consider the images in the followingpoem: The Moon Is a Comma, a Pause in the Sky We stand creekside. Its tomorrow somewhere else and were discussing if well have a tomorrow together. Coyotes howl in the woods behind us. We keep waiting for one of us to save the other, but werequiet. We can leave here still a family or we can walk separate directions. We listen to the chorus, coyotes and baby coyotes, a tornado of cries as if theyre circling.

Kelli Russell Agodon, from Letters fromthe Emily Dickinson Room We can find a few pictures here: the moon asa comma, the creek, the tornado of cries. The last image stands outas the central element, the climax the poem drives toward. Letstake a look: ....We listen to the chorus, coyotes and baby coyotes, a tornado of cries as if theyre circling. How do we open ourselves to this moment, thisimage? Here are some guidelines: 1) What do I see, hear, smell, taste ortouch on the first, basic level of reading? Despite its name, imagery refers to all thesenses. Upon reading these words, I hear a collection of coyotesvoices: the lower howls of the parents, the higheryelps of the babies. I see and feel the soft, silvery brown fur ofthe animals circling in a pack.

They move intently but gently(theyve got babies along), with slinking, deliberate legs. I alsosee the silvery brown funnel of a tornado touching down. 2) What does the image remind me of? After taking the time to appreciate the imagewith my senses, I allow my mind to associate. Freely. What doesthis picture remind me of in my life and in the world? Here arejust a few: A dedicated but bad choir My children as babies My new dog Packs of hunting canines in nature videosand the pink carcasses they chew on Lying in bed at night and hearing coyoteshowl in the woods Destructive tornadoes that strike theMidwest 3) How do I feel? Now I give myself permission to feel what Ifeel. Obviously, there is no right way to do this, so I begin byrevisiting parts of the poem.

The last images certainly seemominous. Circling coyotes? A tornado? As I spend some time with these canines, Ifeel strangely threatened and secure at once. Coyotes howling nearmy neighborhood mean certain death to smaller animals wandering thenight. Yet, the howls remind me I am not alonethat there is moregoing on than my life and its (often small) problems. The animalsmove through the night together as a strong family pack. Theircircling tornado of cries, then, is both a trap and an embracebothdanger and comfort.

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