How To Analyse Poetry

Well, what is good or bad about this essay? What would an examiner make of it? The basic fault is a lack of structure, and from this weakness most of Ted's individual mistakes derive. His study has no logical progression; there is nothing which pulls his ideas together. His first paragraph is really only a paraphrase of parts of the poem. Then he begins to go through the poem stanza by stanza (and they are stanzas, not 'verses', as he calls them), but almost immediately confuses things by bringing in 'companionable' from stanza four. By the 30th line of his essay he has made a number of comments on the first four stanzas, but doesn't then go on to the fifth. Instead, he makes a few comments on Yeats' use of language. Finally, he devotes two paragraphs to an attempt at interpreting what he calls the poem's 'deeper meaning'. That the essay lacks organization and coherence is perhaps the result of Ted's failure to detect the structure of the poem itself. He hasn't realized that each stanza marks a change in the way the poet sees the swans. He hasn't noticed that the poem begins in a world which is fixed, stable and conventionally beautiful, with the swans numbered and in their places, but ends in uncertainty, with a question which envisages the loss of this stable world, and with the swans no longer familiar but 'mysterious'. He hasn't understood that the meaning of the poem changes and progresses. As a result, he assumes that the swans have the same significance throughout. Accordingly, his essay betrays a confusion of thought by stringing together quotations from different stanzas. That he does this in his first paragraph is particularly unfortunate; an examiner would be unfavourably impressed from the outset.

Underlying all this is a major error in basic strategy. Instead of trying to get at meaning by means of a close examination of the poem's language, Ted has tried to make the language fit his assumptions about that meaning. He has tried to make his evidence fit the case, rather than build his case upon the evidence. This is the usual mistake made by people who adopt the message- hunting approach to poetry. Matters are made worse by the fact that he hasn't really any idea what the 'message' might be. We can see what goes through Ted's mind as he tackles this poem. He reads the first stanza, noticing the regularity of the rhythm and the generally picturesque effect of the language, and assumes that Yeats is embarking on a 'nature poem' of a 'romantic' variety. But as he reads on, he realizes that there is more to it than that; there is obviously some symbolic significance attached to the swans. It is understandable that he finds this meaning obscure, but his preoccupation with puzzling it out distracts him. He doesn't go back and re-assess his original assumptions about the poem being a 'romantic' description of a natural scene. Consequently, when he does comment on language and form, he says things which he feels ought to be true of the kind of poem he thinks it is. Because of this, some of his comments are quite bizarre. He says, for example, that 'the language of the poem is simple and therefore blends in well with the simplicity of Nature.' It is true that the poem's language is simple in that there are few difficult words, but in fact Yeats' use of language is quite complex. And surely 'simple' is the least appropriate word to apply to Nature. He says elsewhere that the alliteration of the letters 'c' and 'p' in

They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air

conveys a feeling of softness. It is difficult to see how a sequence of hard 'c's can convey softness. Or how he can say that 'passivity' is expressed by the 'long 'i' ' in 'drift' and 'still', especially since the 'i' is a short vowel in each case.

To be fair to Ted, he has not yet acquired the skills of examining language critically, nor is he simply insensitive to sound. He makes these mistakes because his understanding is obstructed by a number of sentimental concepts he associates with Nature and 'nature poetry': Innocence, Simplicity, Softness, Beauty, Harmoniousness, and so forth. (He's also a little obsessed with 'Environmental' matters-Man's intervention in Nature, pollution, and so on.)

Ted's 'code-cracking' approach is the reason he makes his silliest comment. Unable to find any other secret meaning in the number 59, he concludes that 'it must indicate that the lake is fairly big'.

Because Ted hasn't attempted to get at his 'hidden meaning' by way of questioning Yeats' use of language, such comments as he does make on the poem's linguistic and formal devices are left feebly dangling. They don't lead to any conclusion, and they don't interconnect. He merely says that certain sound-effects are 'pleasant' or that alliterated 'w's are 'positive' (which they aren't). He makes no systematic attempt to relate these phenomena to his interpretative ideas. His feeling is that they are merely decorative or useful for 'emphasis'; he hasn't grasped the notion that verbal effects are events in a poem's development. He says that 'on the whole' the poem is 'regular in form', but it turns out that all he means by this is that the stanzas are all of the same length and have the same rhyme-scheme 'with a few variations'. He doesn't seem to think that these variations might be significant, nor does he say where and what they are. But form is not simply a matter of lines in rhyming groups. Form is largely a question of rhythm (a word which doesn't appear anywhere in Ted's essay). A stanza is a rhythmic unit, and meaning is as much a matter of the order, pace, sound and rhythm of words as it is of the words themselves. Having said that the stanzas were of equal size, Ted should have asked himself whether they all had the same character, the same feeling. They do not, and one important reason why they do not is that Yeats has varied his rhythms from stanza to stanza (and from line to line). The way the 'feel' of the stanzas changes is the way the meaning changes.

There are, however, two occasions when Ted does connect his comments on some formal aspect of the poem with his interpretation. He points out that the absence of punctuation in lines 4, 5 and 6 of the second stanza 'suggests a frantic movement'. 'Frantic' is perhaps not the best word, but the general idea is correct. Had he realized that punctuation is a rhythmic device he might have been led to examine the effect of the poem's rhythms generally.

The second occasion is when he makes the unfortunate remark that the obscurity of the poem's 'deeper meaning' is perhaps a consequence of Yeats' adherence to the discipline of his rhyme-scheme. This raises the complex business of the relationship between form and meaning, which is something we shall have to return to later. For the time being, suffice it to say that Ted's apparent belief that there is some inherent opposition between form and meaning is completely mistaken. In the first place, Yeats chose to adopt a rhyming form to express his meaning, so we must assume that the rhymes have some purpose and significance, rather than think that he deliberately created a hindrance for himself. So much of the poem's meaning depends upon the effect of the sound of the words; the poem is very musical, and rhyme is an integral part of this music. Consider, for example, how the approximate rhyme of 'stones'/'swans' has a completely appropriate harmony of sound, yet the sound of 'stones' is not so close to that of 'swans' that we anticipate the end of the stanza's last line;the 'build-up' to swans is not weakened, and the word keeps all the importance and emphasis that Yeats wants it to have. Or consider how not only the sound but also the meanings of 'old' and 'cold' echo each other in stanza four.

We've been rather heavy with the hatchet on poor Ted, so before we look at a more successful appreciation, let us say that his essay is not totally dreadful. He can be forgiven his preoccupation with the poem's 'hidden meaning', since it is, after all, a poem whose central image is symbolic, and no study of it can justifiably avoid seeking the significance of that symbol. Ted's interpretation, although it is rather incoherent, is not completely wide of the mark. He wants an over-precise meaning for the swans, and so believes that they are a symbol for a particular woman. (Ted is a sentimentalist at heart). The fourth stanza in particular provides some grounds for this belief. He has detected the poet's awareness of the unkind passage of time and the mood of imminent death; in the very last lines of his essay he shows he has seen that the swans in some way represent immortality, even if he thinks that the poet 'resents' them for it. (Ted was far less manic in his search for the 'secret message' concealed in The Wild Swans at Coole than were some of his fellow-students. One, who clearly had read something about Yeats' involvement in Irish politics, was convinced that the swans were 59 revolutionaries who had abandoned Yeats and 'flown' to Paris.) He has one or two good insights which, had he followed them up, might have led him somewhere. He suggests, for instance, that the tranquil scene in the first stanza reflects the poet's state of mind, but he doesn't go on to relate subsequent changes in this scene to corresponding fluctuations in the poet's feeling and attitude. He says somewhere else that 'bell-beat' hints at a summons, but fails to see that this gives something of a mystical character to the swans.

Ted's writing style is nervous and less than graceful, but its occasional ugly turns are probably a consequence of his as yet small vocabulary of critical terms.

Let us turn now to an essay printed under the pseudonym 'Joyce':

The poem is very beautiful, but I don't mean that in any sentimental sense. The poem is about beauty, I think. (Perhaps that is what the swans represent or symbolize.) Or, more accurately, the poem concerns harmony, the harmony between the swans, the swans and their environment, and the harmony between the swans and the poet.
The tone is melancholic because the poet realizes that this harmony between the swans and himself is lost, or at least transient. To a very great extent, the poem depends for its effect upon the sound of its language. In terms of meaning, the words are quite simple ('Companionable streams' is the only phrase I find difficult), but Yeats has been very skilful in making sound echo sense. This is true of individual words and phrases, such as in line 18 where there is consonance between 'trod' and 'tread', but the vowel sound of 'tread' is 'lighter'. It is also true of the poem as a whole; shifts in mood are conveyed by shifts in rhythm and sound. The violent movement in the second stanza is the clearest example. Generally speaking, Yeats sets up regular rhythms which are then broken at significant points. These variations in sound are all the more important because they are in a sense the narrative of the poem. There is only one actual incident: the sudden uprising of the swans at line 10. The main concern of the poem is the way the meaning of the swans changes for the poet.

The swans are introduced at line 6. The preceding 5 lines serve to set the scene, but do more than just that. The poem starts off in a conventional, confident way, but the third line is difficult to scan. There is a pause after 'twilight' where a stress is expected. Also, I half-expected the line to end with a rhyme on 'beauty'. After this ruffling of the rhythm, the fourth line is very emphatic. The total effect of having the first stress on the first syllable, the alliteration of 'still sky', and the semi-colon, is to stop the reader in his tracks for a moment (as the poet stopped, perhaps, on seeing the swans). This pause is dramatic in that it anticipates the poem's key image. It also seems to 'freeze' that image. The opening stanza as a whole is a picture, like a photograph. The scene is motionless, perfect, seemingly permanent. We come finally to the swans, where the rhythm evens out (Yeats writes 'nine-and-fifty' rather than 'fifty-nine' in order to get this evenness) and it is clear at this point that the swans are to be the poem's subject.

But this changes when the second stanza begins. Several things happen. We realize the poet is actually there, and our attention shifts from the natural scene to him. There is a movement in time, to the past. (The time-changes are confusing throughout the poem, and I'm not sure whether 'saw', in line 9, refers to the present or to the time nineteen years previously.) We get the first suggestion that the poem is concerned with time and with time's passing. The phrase 'has come upon me' has a sad and perhaps resentful ring. Because of this, the imagery of the first stanza takes on new meaning. Until the poet makes his appearance, the autumn woodland and the twilight are to be taken literally, but now we pick up their associations with ageing and fading. The most noticeable change is in the swans themselves. From being static 'props' in the pastoral scene of the first stanza they are transformed into figures of great and anarchic power. The harmony is shattered by a sequence of words suggesting dischord: 'suddenly ... scatter . broken . . . clamorous.'

This vigorous movement by the swans brings with it a deepening in tone. The poet has studied the swans and now his 'heart is sore.' Because the two statements are connected by 'and', it is not necessarily the case that he is grieving because of the swans, but that suggestion is there. 'All's changed', and although what 'All' is, is not made clear, there is a feeling of loss. The loss, it seems, is the poet's youthfulness; nineteen years on from his first visit to Coole, he walks with a heavier tread. But I feel his unhappiness is not caused by age alone. There has been a change in the way he sees the world. (It was twilight nineteen years ago, but it did not seem so significant then.)

The swans, at this point in the poem, begin to take on symbolic qualities. 'Bell-beat' describes the heavy rhythm of the birds' wings, but for me the phrase has connotations of a vaguely religious nature, and bells are a signal or summons. It is as if the swans were leading him then, or even perhaps lifting him in some way.

In the fourth stanza the swans are certainly symbolic. They are 'lovers', and constant lovers too. By contrast with the man they are 'unwearied'. They are at home in both elements, the 'cold/companionable streams' and the air. They are ageless, their 'hearts do not grow old' (nor 'sore'). But it is the last couplet of this stanza which is most important in conveying the symbolic character of the swans.

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

The word 'attend' tells us that the birds do not have to seek passion and conquest, but that passion and conquest are in some way servants of the swans, following them wherever they care to wander. The swans are noble or regal, perhaps even god-like. A number of words in this stanza ('lover', 'companionable', 'hearts', 'passion', 'conquest') hint that the poet is brooding over a lost lover, but his sorrow seems to have more to do with his inability to be like the swans than with disappointed love. Despite the feeling of sadness, there is a return to calm in this stanza. The word 'still' occurs twice. The rhythm is in a 'more or less regular iambic metre and soft consonants dominate. There is only one word which has any hardness ('conquest'). Line 22 is smoothed even more by the long alliteration of

' . . conquest, wander where they will.'

This air of stillness continues into the final stanza. There is a return to 'now'. The poem ends with a question, and the word 'awake' comes as a surprise: the swans are a dream or an illusion.

Exactly what the swans symbolize is difficult to say. Perhaps one would have a better idea of their meaning after reading more of Yeats' poems. In this, the symbolism remains rather vague, and this must be deliberate. It is clear that the swans have greater significance at the end of the poem than at the beginning. It is also clear that they are eternal, outside time. ('Still', in both places in stanza four can mean 'always' or 'forever'.) Therefore they remind the poet that he is not. It may be that he will 'awake' only when he dies. The fact that he comes to Coole every year suggests that his counting is some kind of ritual. The recurrence of references to age and the autumn twilight lead me to think that the swans represent his past (perhaps he is 59 years old) or his youth. 'Passion and conquest' indicate youthfulness. This would explain why they will have flown away when he dies. But the thing is that the poet doesn't complete his ritual counting. Before he had 'well finished', the swans 'suddenly mount/And scatter'. It's as if they refuse to be pinned down and numbered, refuse to be controlled or owned by him. So that whereas at the beginning of the poem the swans are numbered, static figures in a still

landscape, at the end they are drifting, and they are remote, 'mysterious'. In the end, the poet seems to accept this. The last emotion is 'delight'. He overcomes his melancholy by realizing that although he may die, or merely lose his youthfulness, the immortal swans will continue to delight other men who are still young and passionate. Finally, the swans are beautiful because they remain aloof and mysterious.

First of all, we want to say that we do not intend you to take this essay as a 'model answer'. It is by no means perfect. However, Joyce does avoid the traps which caught Ted. Most importantly, she does attempt to reach an understanding of the poem by means of a sensitive look at its language and Yeats' technique. The results of her adoption of this method are threefold:

(i) Her appreciation has a simple but adequate structure-a beginning (two paragraphs of introductory remarks which, although they are of a general and tentative nature, make specific references to the text), a middle (a paragraph, more or less, on each stanza) and an end (twenty-odd lines on the symbolism).

(ii) She has a fair amount of material, and her essay is a better length than Ted's.

(iii) Her interpretation of the poem's meaning-whether it is satisfactory or not-is based squarely on the text. She doesn't formulate a theory and then try to make the poem conform to it.

Of course, Joyce's study has its flaws. For one thing, it is rather uneven. She makes some good analytical comments on the way Yeats uses rhythmical variations in the first stanza, but doesn't go into equal detail elsewhere, even when considerations of metre and rhythm are equally important if not more so. Of the fourth stanza she says only that 'the rhythm is in a more-or-less regular iambic metre' and leaves it at that. judging by the amount of care she takes over the poem's opening lines, she could have been a good deal more precise. She is good at detecting the changes that take place between stanzas, but says little about the continuity of ideas and images across the stanza divisions. She misses the connection between 'bell-beat' and 'clamorous', for instance. She says nothing about rhyme, even though some attention paid to the approximate rhyme in lines 5 and 6 would have helped her to make her point about the 'dramatic' introduction of the swans. But when Joyce does have difficulty over particular phrases or ideas she has the sense to say so; at least an examiner would know that she is aware of the problems, even though she cannot see their solutions.

These things aside, the appreciation is pretty competent. The writing style is fairly free and self-assured; the reader doesn't hear the sound of nail-biting in the background. There is a reasonable balance between technical detail and her more personal conjectures. Best of all, she reasons her way towards a general interpretation. Because she begins with the way the language achieves its effects, she has, by the time she has gone through the five stanzas, ample material with which to build her argument about the symbolism of the swans. As it turns out, her interpretation is quite convincing. She does not insist on an over-precise meaning. She doesn't jump at the red-herring possibility that 59 was Yeats' age, even though she was tempted. (In fact, Yeats was 54 when the poem was published.) Her most valuable insight is that it is not the actual number that matters, but the act of counting. She sees that by counting the swans the poet is trying to 'pin them down', to make them a part of his personal 'ritual', as she calls it. He hopes that by numbering them he can symbolically own them. When they become violently animated (stanza two) they assert their independence of the poet, who is only mortal. His initial reaction is a rather self-centred sorrow, but Joyce puts the emphasis in the right place when she says that at the end the poet comes to terms with the swans' freedom (and therefore with his ageing). She is quite right when she says that the final question is not envious, but actually optimistic. In view of all this, it seems reasonable to conclude that the swans are symbols of youth or vitality.

I'd just like to say a quick 'thank you' to Unnamable. I have actually spent most of the day so far revising poetry for my first year university English Literature exam. I thought I'd have a little read of some of the threads whilst I had lunch and came across this. I think I've heard most of the points you've made before but it's always good to have these things reinforced and I liked the way you contrasted two actual essays instead of just listing the techniques to watch out for.

I second Dark Lady. That was very good. We are taught in college what makes a good essay but never a bad essay, except for the red marks that come back on our own. Over time we learn, but after how many bad papers? It is helpful to examine poor essays, more specificaly, why they are poor.

I found this interesting from the pov of the examiner. I'm just starting to grade papers and, though I'm assuming it's mostly a matter of practice, I'm still geting used to how to phrase my comments and deciding what will be most useful to students, so I used these as a little test exercise to see how I would respond, and then I got some good ideas for the way a more practiced examiner thinks it would be useful to respond. Thanks Unnamable.

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Originally Posted by ktd222

I'm not sure I understand. For example:

Go in the window
Is alternating stress/unstress...so tell me how that would change by what you explained in quotation(edit)?

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edit: Go in the window

s/u/u/s/u

I might have had too many alcohol free beverages.

Re. writing poetry.

I am not sure if that is one of the requisites of poetry appreciation. Surely, having exprerienced oneself, a poet -however amateurish s/he is- might be able to respond more quickly or appropriately to the technicalities of a poem but over all I am not persuaded. We don't need to be cooks to know a good meal or play football ourselves to spot a good footballing skills surely?

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

Re. writing poetry.

I am not sure if that is one of the requisites of poetry appreciation. Surely, having exprerienced oneself, a poet -however amateurish s/he is- might be able to respond more quickly or appropriately to the technicalities of a poem but over all I am not persuaded. We don't need to be cooks to know a good meal or play football ourselves to spot a good footballing skills surely?

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I agree it's not a requisite to appreciate poetry. But I also don't think it's about technacaliteis if the rhythm is there. It must be there for a reason, and in noticing this can lead to a greater appreciation: to why you appreciate the work.

It certainly helps to appreciate just how hard writing poetry actually is. All of that effortless rhyme that dripped from the pens of Shaky Bill and his mates took months of effort - hard to appreciate that without having a try yourself.

The first line of Milton's Paradise Lost presents a different type of problem.


Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Again, this line is predominantly iambic, but a problem occurs with the word Disobedience. If we read strictly by the meter, then we must fuse the last two syllables of the word. However, if we read the word normally, we have a breakage in the line's metrical structure. In this way, the poet forges a tension between meter and rhythm: does the word remain contained by the structure, or do we choose to stretch the word out of the normal foot, thereby disobeying the structure in which it was made? Such tension adds meaning to the poem by using meter and rhythm to dramatize certain conflicts. In this example, Milton forges such a tension to present immediately the essential conflicts that lead to the fall of Adam and Eve.

I found this at a website when I was looking up accent/unccent usages.
Is this technacalities?

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Re. writing poetry.

I am not sure if that is one of the requisites of poetry appreciation. Surely, having exprerienced oneself, a poet -however amateurish s/he is- might be able to respond more quickly or appropriately to the technicalities of a poem but over all I am not persuaded. We don't need to be cooks to know a good meal or play football ourselves to spot a good footballing skills surely?

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No, I don't think a person needs to write poetry in order to read it well. It's just something that might enhance someone's appreciation of a poet's work. I think it's the same with most things. I have almost zero talent for practicing the visual arts but I've found that trying a little drawing or painting or pottery just for my own pleasure has helped in my art history studies. Similarly piano lessons have added to my appreciation of music, and practicing cooking myself as well as taking a few cooking lessons while abroad, helped me appreciate food preperation as an art rather than a chore. It isn't necessary to do something to appreciate it, but performing something yourself can enrich that appreciation.

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Originally Posted by ktd222

I agree it's not a requisite to appreciate poetry. But I also don't think it's about technacaliteis if the rhythm is there. It must be there for a reason, and in noticing this can lead to a greater appreciation: to why you appreciate the work.

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I think it would also depend on your priorities when reading poetry. For me, 'meaning' of a poem is more important and that is the first thing I pay attention. If I like a poem's message, then I am more likely to remember it later on. However, a good rhyme does not always have the same effect on me.

PL & XC> I agree that writing can make one see how hard it actually is to put the right words together to create the right rhyme/sound while still giving the right message.

However, does it help with our 'understanding' of poetry?

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

I think it would also depend on your priorities when reading poetry. For me, 'meaning' of a poem is more important and that is the first thing I pay attention. If I like a poem's message, then I am more likely to remember it later on. However, a good rhyme does not always have the same effect on me.

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What creates the meaning for you? What enhances that meaning? Why not just read a paper instead?