An Email from My Poetry Teacher

Last semester, I was taking a wonderful poetry class from a wonderful teacher, and I sent her an email asking her how to approach a close reading of a poem because I was failing to notice some important features of the poems we were reading. Here is part of the email she sent back (I am not putting her name in this post because I didn't ask her whether I could post her email):

"[T]he big picture is the first one to get--what is this about, how does it begin, how does it end, how does it evolve to get from beginning to end, what is the form, why, and what is memorable about the whole, both in re-imagination of theme and in interesting use of form? ...[Y]our instinct to see the big picture first is right: and then your insights about particular passages will 'fit in' and confirm the big picture."

You can see from my earlier reading of "Poem in October"--if you read my post, then my comments--that I am prone to focus too much on details and not enough on the big picture. That is my weakness: I get sucked into the details that I love.

I wanted to share the email with you because it helped me learn how not to miss important details in poems.

Careful: make sure you can see the arc. If you don't see a skeleton, a climax, a pattern, you have to stay sitting down in your chair a while longer.