How to Read a Poem

Hello there .. all those who love to read and to write-and write about that too. Well , this is what this blog is about.




I am reading How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch these days and his superb style and amazing collection of emblematic poems spruced up with little lovable anecdotes make it a mellow read  for both- the  casual  reader and the connoisseur. Hirsch advises the reader to read the book by  the light of a bedside lamp- well it does acquire strange  alchemical properties then which absolutely mesmerise and hold you to the book by an unseen ball and chain. Poetry is like that.


It also  made me think that poetry is about human-sized feelings and understandings that defy boxed-in  definitions of perspective and  interpretation.


Amongst my favourites is  Wallace Stevens'"The Man with the Blue Guitar"

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are 
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

I think poetry is just that- seeing things as they are.And the wonderful thing is that there need not be just one way to see these. You are free to use 

your own imagination and lense to view it.