Michael T. Young: How to Read a Poem

Generally, our culture teaches us to read poems as riddles, problems for which we must find an answer. Our primary concern is to formulate an explanation of the poem. And that misses not only an aspect of its meaning but the fundamental core of its meaning, for a poem is first and foremost an art object, something that gives us pleasure.

In our day-to-day lives we use language sort of the way we use luggage, i.e., to transport something we deem of more value than the luggage itself, the meaning. But once the meaning is delivered, the luggage, the language, is irrelevant. We order food at a restaurant, we make a grocery list, we tell someone we like their shoes. Once the thought or feeling is communicated, the language itself is dispensable, and often the specific words and their order are not crucial to carrying that meaning. In fact, an occasional malapropism or misplaced modifier in these daily communications generally can be ignored because context allows us to understand what is meant. And even in the absence of such errors, there are various syntaxes and dictions one could use to carry the same meaning and any one of them will suffice without harm to the intent. But that is not the case with an art object made of words; the specific words in their specific order is necessary for the particular feelings and ideas evoked. As Coleridge put it, “Poetry is the best words in the best order.” But this can be difficult to see with poems because of our daily use of language in a purely functional capacity. That pedestrian usage inclines us to approach poems with similar expectations. But if we consider music, especially music without lyrics, it’s easier to grasp what sets an art object apart. We don’t need to explain Bach’s Partitas to enjoy them, and that is the point of listening to them, to enjoy them, to experience whatever feelings—and thoughts—they elicit. The composer Sibelius once had a friend over for dinner. During the visit, Sibelius put on an album of his newest symphony. Once it finished, the friend said, “It’s beautiful, but what does it mean?” Sibelius’ response was to get up and put the symphony on again. 

This is true of all art objects including poems. The poet Mary Ruefle said, “I believe that if a poem gives you pleasure, then you have understood it.” This ties the meaning of a poem to our aesthetic experience, as it should be. An explanation of a poem divorced from our pleasure in it is a misunderstanding of the poem. What a poem communicates is not merely semantic but is also and simultaneously visceral and intuitive. Eliot said, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” What we receive from a poem when we read a poem as an art object is more than a reductive meaning we can then explain to others because no explanation can produce the sensations brought forth by experiencing the poem, just as no explanation of a song can give someone the experience of listening to the song. The semantic aspect of the poem is only one part of its pleasure, and the pleasure is an inextricable part of the meaning. So, whether listening to a song, reading a poem, looking at a painting, or any other work of art, the experience of the work of art is intrinsic to its meaning. 

A large part of the pleasure of a poem is its music and that music is inherently bound up with its meaning. The poet Joseph Brodsky said, “to the poet phonetics and semantics are, with few exceptions, identical.” On the page, of course, the ideas, the sounds, the images, the grammar can all be teased out as distinct qualities. But they are little different than the different instruments of an orchestra performing together to make the music of a symphony. All these distinct elements perform together to make the music. If we remove instruments, we change the music, perhaps even destroy it. This is why, like a piece of music, every word in the order the poet places them is necessary. Speaking of Beethoven’s music, Leonard Bernstein said that it gives you “the feeling that whatever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can rightly happen at that instant, in that context.” This sense of rightness, this struggle for inevitability was something the composer dedicates himself to. That is what the piece of music gives us, that sense of rightness, and this is not an explanation but an aesthetic experience. In a poem, that sense of rightness or inevitability is in every element as well, not just one thing, but each word, each comma, each image, and thought. Yes, even the thoughts or ideas play a part in the music of a poem. The poet George Oppen said that the music of a poem was “the progression of the thought.” I wouldn’t reduce it to any one element as he does, but the thoughts or ideas in a poem clearly play a part in the music. 

When we sit back without attempting to explain the poem or expecting it to be merely meaningful in the way a restaurant menu is meaningful or the instructions to assemble a kitchen appliance are meaningful, but let it’s words, its sounds, its images, and ideas wash over us and allow it to pull out of us whatever it brings forth, both feelings and thoughts, then we experience its meaning. Then we experience the poem as an art object. We can, from this point, go deeper into it, thinking through what it calls up in us, considering why and how its elements relate to each other and to us. This can enrich our experience of the meaning, but any explanation we give from this analysis is something less than the meaning of the poem. To quote Brodsky again, “Any attempt to approach analytically a phenomenon whose nature is synthetic is doomed by definition.” This holds true for a poem because a poem is a synthesis, a bringing together of elements to make new associations in an aesthetic experience, in an art object. Analysis is an attempt to explain something by taking it apart. But the very new thing created, the art object, is what is taken away by analysis, by the dismantling. We can learn something from it, but we lose something essential as well: the poem itself. 

If we attempt to explain a chair by taking it apart and laying out the legs, seat, and back on the floor, we have the pieces, but we don’t have a functional chair. We can’t sit in it any longer, and sitting in the chair is its meaning expressed. We might from such deconstruction learn how to assemble other chairs from similar pieces, but we don’t have a functional chair any longer. That exists by the specific relationship of the pieces configured as they were before deconstructing it. This is why Brodsky said what he did about analysis, since a poem exists by assembling specific words in a specific order to create a particular experience for the reader. That is a synthesis, a putting together. But analysis takes it apart and while it might tell you something about the construction of the poem, you lose the experience that art object gives you by its unique construction, just like the disassembled chair. So, while we can learn something from analysis, we don’t get the full meaning by analysis.

This also is clear in Robert Frost’s description of how a poem begins. He said, “A poem…begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words.” So, it begins not as an idea but resolves in a fully realized poem that includes idea. It is a groping toward thought and word, not a fully formed thought that is outfitted with language. Thinking of poems being written in the latter way is what leads people to believe that poetry is merely ideas dressed up in fancy clothes, it’s linguistic decoration and nothing more. Thus, they approach it as something to decode and trace back to an original thought or idea. But that’s incorrect. It starts as a feeling, and often a vague feeling. That feeling might be embodied for a time in a single word or image that, for some reason the poet can’t understand, haunts him. He doesn’t know why the weathered owl decorating his neighbor’s driveway post sticks in his mind, but something is there. It’s not as obvious as a thought or idea, that will be discovered as the feeling reaches toward expression, trying different words to move forward into meaning. 

Similar to the way Frost says poems are written, starting in feeling and struggling toward thought and words, reading poems should follow a similar trajectory. The experience of reading a poem should not start in the meaning first, but in the feelings it evokes just hearing those words, in the images, and rhythms carrying you along, much like a good song. Those rhythms then bring us along toward the understanding embodied in them, like a boat being pushed along by the waves toward some distant island. But it happens gradually, gentling, and eventually. Sometime in the fourth or fifth reading maybe, the mind comes up on the beach to weigh anchor, the rhythms of the waves lapping its hull and repeating the name of the land we have arrived at. 

Copyright 2025 Michael T. Young

Michael T. Young’s fourth collection, Mountain Climbing a River, will be published by Broadstone Media in late 2025. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac.