How to Read a Poem: Seven Steps

How to Read a Poem is an introduction to creative reading, the art of coming up with something to say about a text. It presents a new method for learning and teaching the skills of poetic interpretation, providing its readers with practical steps they can use to construct perceptive, inventive readings of any poem they might read.

The Introduction sets out the aims of the book and provides some basic operating principles for applying the seven steps. In each subsequent chapter, the step is introduced and explained, relevant points of interpretative theory and methodology are discussed and illustrated with multiple examples, and the step is put into practice in a final section. Through these final sections, step by step, the book develops an extended reading of a single poem, Letitia Landon’s "Lines Written under a Picture of a Girl Burning a Love-Letter" from 1822. That reading is sustained across the whole arc of the book, providing a detailed worked example of how to read a poem.

This accessible and enjoyable guide is the ideal introduction to anyone approaching the detailed study of poetry for the first time and offers valuable theoretical insights for those more experienced in the area.

Thomas H. Ford is a lecturer of English at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.