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by pradn
1906 days ago
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You're absolutely right. Poets play with words, sounds, and ideas. And extracting the meaning shouldn't be your first aim - perhaps it should be enjoying the sound and the cadence and the imagery. Consider the first stanza of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44479/ode-to-a-nighti... A few things that you'll probably pick up with no effort at all:
1) the puzzlement of what "Lethe" is or what it even means
2) the joke of calling your mouth a "drain"
3) the cleverness of "being too happy in thine happiness"
4) the way the long third sentence keeps going and going, ending in the release of singing, just like a bird flies, sits on a branch, and sings "with full-throated ease" At a first read, the poem is delightful to me just because it speaks of the happiness of a bird and the unhappiness of being human. The musicality is so lovely I want to memorize it, and bring it out whenever I see a bird or want to sing like one or fly like one. And then you can read the reams of analysis people have drawn from this poem. |
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