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https://wordhoard.substack.com/p/a-note-on-method
Later today I’ll send my first post on “The Triumph of Love,” but in preparation I wanted to share this brief note on my method for this close reading project.
Later today I’ll send my first post on “The Triumph of Love,” but in preparation I wanted to share this brief note on my method for this close reading project.
I am going to break each post up into several sections, the first section being a close reading with no reference to outside sources and the second being more of an annotation, with information about obscure terms, etc.
While no doubt our reading benefits from Google, a dictionary, or an annotation on the poem like this one, I think there is a great deal to be said for simply reading the poem first, many times, and learning from what it contains before we turn to outside sources.
There is a widespread attitude, stemming from many high-school England classes, that a poem is a code to be cracked by the super-intelligent. This is not true.
A poem is a living thing that breathes and moves and speaks, and if we listen to it closely, we learn from it how to listen to it, just as we do with a friend or neighbor.
There is another widespread attitude that a poem is, essentially, its “message,” and if we can extract what the poem “means” we have mastered the poem. This is not true. At least it is not true of good poetry.
A good poem can no more be reduced to its message than a good person can be reduced to her creed.
This ideolization of poetry (I did invent that word, yes), this reduction of a thing of beauty to a single idea or thesis, is destructive. In a good poem, there are probably many ideas at play that do not easily exist alongside each other.
A poem is like the Eucharist: it means nothing more or less than what it is. What it is, of course, is a matter for debate—possibly a matter of life and death. But when we talk about a poem, we are always talking about its lifeblood.
There is no skin on a poem to peel off in an attempt to see what’s beneath. There may be layers, ironies, red herrings, diversions, misdirections. The speaker may be dodgy, sketchy, even downright malicious.
But a close reading like the one we are about to undertake isn’t a dissection. It is sitting. It is listening. It is receiving. When we read a poem, we are reading its beating heart.
Join me! Later today we're starting a close reading of Geoffrey Hill's 20th century epic "The Triumph of Love." Sign up here and don't miss a post. https://wordhoard.substack.com/p/poetry-of-the-apocalypse
