Close reading at its best is reading with a careful scrutiny of what Cleanth Brooks called the 'well-wrought urn' of the poem. It involves a quasi-religious attention to the text and the ways we respond to it. The close reader practises becoming attuned to the meanings and energies released by the content and form of each individual poem, and is rewarded, on a good day, with a feeling akin to exaltation: the flexion of these mental muscles releases us from our usual routines of processing language and reminds us of the full spectrum of thoughts and feelings of which we are capable, but which are usually smothered by a culture that promotes emotional and intellectual inarticulacy. On a bad day, close reading is a dry-as-dust pseudo-scientific analysis of the formal aspects of a poem, paying no attention to what a text might be saying to us, or how we respond to it on a personal level. Reading, like writing, traverses a tightrope between richness on one side and redundancy on the other. Anyway, for those who wish - or find themselves obliged - to pay some close attention to poetry, here are a few recommendations. For browsing and selecting.
Reading
First and foremost, we have to read poetry until it feels like a normal thing to do. Classroom analysis can lead us to think that every poem has to be laboured over, line by line, which makes any anthology seem intimidating. Reading at a normal speaking rate is probably about right. We can 'let a poem go' even if we feel we haven't extracted every bit of its juice, and come back to it later if we wish (it's not going to go anywhere).
As a way of getting into poetry, and making the whole enterprise seem important on a personal level, the anthologies by Neil Astley of Bloodaxe Books, have had a phenomenal success. In order: Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being Human.
Then we have to learn to read historically, to understand what we can expect from a seventeenth-century religious meditation or an Augustan satire, and what we need to bring to that meeting. The fullest single-volume anthology of English poetry that I know is the Norton Anthology of Poetry, and the accompanying Teaching with the Norton Anthology of Poetry covers aspects from versification to genre and form. That's unfortunately out of print, but Furniss and Bath, Reading Poetry: an Introduction is not. Downsides to the Norton book: it's massive, expensive and the paper is very thin. None of which can be said against the excellent website, which is a whole course in itself.
For other anthologies, the thing is to browse around and find a couple that feel right.
Introductions to Poetry
There are many books introducing us to poetry and the skills of reading it. Here are a few personal recommendations.
James Fenton, An Introduction to English Poetry. Mostly on metre and other formal properties and their importance, which Fenton explains and illustrated very clearly.
Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. Versification and form followed to arcane recesses, with lively guidance from a national treasure. Exercises for the apprentice craftsman.
John Lennard, The Poetry Handbook is an engaging book. Lennard covers the central features of poetic language and form, and has an unusual amount to say about punctuation, telling us along the way about printer's terms like 'leading' (the space between lines).
Barry Spurr, Studying Poetry is a dull title for a consistently interesting book. Unlike Fenton and Lennard, Spurr organises his book according to historical periods, with example readings and exercises.
Peck and Coyle, Practical Criticism, covers prose and drama as well as poetry. It is aimed squarely at students facing an exam, and offers a very helpful methodical approach to the discipline. I like their advice to look for any implicit tension in a text. Lindy Miller, Practical Criticism also concentrates on building up skills to tackle essays and exams. My own Mastering the Language of Literature takes a more linguistic approach to the topic: more on syntax than some other guides, less on verse forms.
There are many others out there. There's a post in the early days of this blog on Eagleton, How to Read a Poem. It's a valuable book, but I'm not sure it's an ideal introduction. I couldn't get much from Tom Paulin, The Secret Life of Poems, but others may see what I'm missing. The classic books by I A Richards (Practical Criticism, 1929) and William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity, 1930) lie slightly outside the scope of this post, but preside over everything on it.
Examples of Readings
A little method goes a long way. Just as we can learn how to play a game from watching it, so there is much to be learned from reading good examples of poetry reading. I like Ruth Padel's two books, which take us through individual poems: 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem and The Poem and the Journey. Lionel Trilling, Prefaces to the Experience of Literature is a venerable older book.
Online
Some siftings from the net. There should be something here to stimulate all tastes.
Norton poetry website (as above)
For a basic intro, see the short guide by Nicholas Marsh on Palgrave Skills4Study site
Carol Rumens Poem of the Week is published on the Guardian website. Interesting choices, thoughtful readings and a lively discussion thread.
Introduction to Practical Criticism by Cambridge English Faculty explains what Practical Criticism is and has a couple of lessons.
Tips on Practical Criticism, for Students of English, by J H Prynne. Produced for students at Caius College, Cambridge and posted online. Prynne is regarded by many as one of our leading poets. Once you get past the administrative stuff about the Tripos this is an extremely stimulating account of poetics and the reading experience.
Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, published by the Poetry Foundation.
And a different How to Read a Poem on the American site Poets.org
Short Guide
Finally, an old handout which I wrote years ago, Close Reading of Poetry: An Introduction:
