HOW TO READ POETRY
“Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo
from the bamboo”—Matsuo Bashō
[Matsuo Bashō was a seventeenth-century Japanese
master of haiku. Haiku is traditionally a Japanese poem consisting of three
short lines that do not rhyme. Bashō had written a series of insightful
reflections on poetry.]
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines
poetry as literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness
of experience or a specific emotional response through
language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. The
terms—‘meaning’, ‘sound’ and ‘rhythm’— highlight the three significant features
of poetry. However, in the study of
poetry, ‘sound’ and ‘rhythm’ are often relegated to the background, and
‘meaning’ gets prominence. Prof. Butcher (in his Harvard Lectures) points
out the reason for the negligence of ‘sound’ and ‘rhythm’ in poetry: “The art
of printing has done much to dull our literary perceptions….
We miss much of the charm if the eye is made to do duty also for the ear.”
Without their vocal force, the words are only ‘half alive’ on
the printed page, and the music in the words becomes faint echo’ (quoted by
W.H. Hudson).
