Understanding Poetry

Summary

Understanding Poetry is an American college textbook and poetry anthology by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1938. The two Southern critics had met as students at Vanderbilt University and were both Rhodes Scholars at Oxford; in the 1930s they taught English together at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where they also founded the literary journal The Southern Review in 1935. The book grew out of their frustration in the classroom. According to accounts of its origins, the textbooks then in use were full of biographical facts and impressionistic criticism and failed to show how the language of a poem differs from the language of an editorial or other prose. Prompted by their students' difficulty in interpreting poems, Brooks and Warren first prepared a booklet that modeled close reading through examples. Its success led to a series of textbooks: An Approach to Literature (1936), Understanding Poetry (1938), and later Understanding Fiction and Modern Rhetoric. Understanding Poetry argues that poetry should be taught as poetry. The authors warn against reducing a poem to a simple paraphrase, against explaining it chiefly through biography or history, and against reading it only for a moral lesson. Such information may help to clarify a reading, but it is a means to an end. The reader is asked instead to attend to the poem itself: its situation and speaker, its images, rhythm and metre, its tone, and the way these elements work together to produce meaning. The book combines an anthology of poems with discussions and exercises that guide students through this kind of analysis, arranged by elements such as narrative, description, metrics, tone, imagery and theme in later editions. The book was revised for new editions in 1950, 1960 and 1976. It became one of the most influential textbooks of the century, spreading the methods of the New Criticism through American colleges and schools. The critic Arthur Mizener recalled that for young teachers it came as a kind of revelation, because it offered a way of talking about an actual poem in an actual classroom. Later critics have objected that its approach neglects history and context, but even they acknowledge its wide reach.

Plot or Argument

• Purpose

  To teach students to read a poem as poetry, not as biography, history, paraphrase or moral message.

• Method

  Poems are presented with discussion and exercises that direct attention to speaker, situation, imagery, rhythm, tone and theme.

• Arrangement

  Later editions group poems by elements such as narrative, description, metrics, tone, imagery and theme, followed by poems for study.

• Editions

  First published 1938, and revised in 1950, 1960 and 1976.

Lessons

• A poem is not its paraphrase

  Brooks and Warren warn that summarizing a poem's message in prose loses what makes it a poem. Students learn to treat form and meaning together.

  • Why is a paraphrase not the same as a poem?
  • When is a paraphrase still useful?
  • Try paraphrasing a psalm; what is lost?

• Background as a means, not an end

  The authors allow biography and history to clarify a reading but insist that the poem itself comes first. This balances the classical habit of studying context with careful attention to the text.

  • How can knowing a poet's life help or hinder reading?
  • What should come first when reading a poem?
  • Give an example where historical background changed your reading.

• Reading for more than a moral

  Brooks and Warren caution against reading poems only as moral lessons. Christian readers can value poetry's moral weight while also attending to how it says what it says.

  • Why do the authors resist didactic reading?
  • Can a poem be both beautiful and morally instructive?
  • How do the Psalms combine art and teaching?

Context

Brooks and Warren taught together at Louisiana State University in the 1930s, where they edited The Southern Review. The New Criticism, drawing on I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot, was emerging as a movement of close reading.

Composition

The book grew from a booklet they prepared for their own students that modeled close reading through examples, which led to An Approach to Literature (1936) and then Understanding Poetry (1938). It was revised in 1950, 1960 and 1976.

Reception

It became one of the most widely used poetry textbooks in America and is credited with spreading the New Criticism through college classrooms for decades; critics of the New Criticism later challenged its neglect of history and context.

Comparisons

• Practical Criticism

  Richards's experiment with unsigned poems prepared the ground for the classroom close reading this textbook made standard.

• The Sacred Wood

  Eliot's insistence that criticism attend to the poetry, not the poet, is a forerunner of the textbook's method.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The warnings against paraphrase, biography and didactic reading.
• How each discussion moves from a poem's situation to its meaning.
• The treatment of rhythm and metre as part of meaning.
• The idea of tone as the expression of attitude.
• How exercises ask students to test their own readings.

Key terms and names

Close reading

Careful, detailed attention to the words, images and structure of a text.

Paraphrase

A restatement of a poem's content in prose, which Brooks and Warren treat as a limited aid.

Tone

The expression of the speaker's attitude toward the subject and the reader.

Imagery

Language that appeals to the senses, including metaphor, simile and personification.

New Criticism

A twentieth-century movement that focused on the text itself as the object of literary study.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What three ways of reading poetry do Brooks and Warren caution against?
2. Comprehension What prompted Brooks and Warren to write the book?
3. Interpretation Why might a paraphrase misrepresent a poem?
4. Interpretation How can rhythm and tone contribute to meaning?
5. Big Question Can a poem be understood fully without knowing anything about its author?
6. Big Question Is beauty in poetry separable from truth?

Faith Connections

• Psalm 23 (Scripture)

  A familiar psalm shows how imagery and tone carry meaning that a bare paraphrase cannot.

• Nehemiah 8:8 (Scripture)

  The Levites read distinctly and gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading; an ancient model of careful reading.

• Augustine, On Christian Doctrine (Great Conversation)

  Augustine's attention to figures of speech in Scripture parallels the close attention Brooks and Warren ask of readers.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A poem must be understood as poetry, through the working together of its elements, not reduced to paraphrase, biography, history or moral message.

Rhetorical device: worked example. The book teaches its method by analysing particular poems step by step and then setting exercises for students.

Debate: Resolved: that a poem should be studied primarily as a work of art rather than as a historical document.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Following the method of Understanding Poetry, write a close reading of a short poem that attends to speaker, imagery, rhythm and tone.

Comparison with Practical Criticism: How does Understanding Poetry answer the problems Richards found in Practical Criticism?

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Choose a short poem and, in small groups, report separately on its speaker, imagery, rhythm and tone; then combine the reports into one reading.

• Essay

  Write a close reading of a short poem without referring to the poet's life, then add one paragraph explaining what biography would add.

• Poetry

  Write a poem whose meaning would be lost in a prose paraphrase, and explain why.

Further Reading

• The Well Wrought Urn, Cleanth Brooks

• Modern Poetry and the Tradition, Cleanth Brooks

• All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren