Some people think that when you're interpreting, you're trying to figure out what the poet intended in the poem. Others say that you can't ever be sure what the poet intended. But you can come up with intelligent ways to account for the feelings the poem gives you when you read it. Try to explain what you think the poem is doing and how the poem does it.
When you interpret poetry, you do the same thing you do when you interpret anything:
- Understand the explicit, literal meaning.
- Consider what's implied, unsaid, or suggested — often by asking attentive questions about the poem.
- Build an interpretation based on your speculations about what's implied.
You may not take these steps in this order, and you may do some steps more times and other steps fewer, but all these steps are involved in the interpretation of poetry.
Understanding the literal
If the poem in front of you tells a story or seems to have a fairly explicit topic (one that's given to you), take note. A poem's literal meaning is its body, and you need to know it. That literal meaning, however, may be pretty complicated. But that's what's beautiful and worthwhile about poetry.
Here is the poem "Richard Cory," by Edward Arlington Robinson, one of the finest poets in U.S. history. Watch what the poem explicitly lays out for you.
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich — yes, richer than a king —
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
On the explicit or literal level, this poem tells the story of a high-class, rich, much-admired man who, contrary to all expectations, commits suicide. But that isn't all: The speaker in this poem, the voice telling it to us, is "We people on the pavement," and the people have a story, too, which Robinson explicitly lays out: They admire Richard Cory, they "wish that [they] were in his place," and they have lives filled with work and disappointment, which is fairly explicit in that line "went without the meat, and cursed the bread," an echo of a biblical image of misery.
Getting at what's implied
The literal part of a poem is important, but it's not all there is. Refer to "Richard Cory" by Edward Arlington Robinson in the preceding section. There's a further feeling in the poem, emanating from the words. The feeling isn't explicit, but it's pretty strong nevertheless.
 | When you have strong feelings as you read a poem, start interrogating the poem. Step back and ask global questions about things like setting, speaker, character, and situation: |
- Where does the poem take place? In this poem, the setting is an American town.
- What kind of town? Some of the people are ordinary ("people on the pavement") and others aren't (Cory is "imperially" slim, which has overtones of royalty, picked up in the phrase "richer than a king").
- What's the problem or conflict here? The ordinary people wish they were like the richer, extraordinary ones. They find their lives hard and disappointing (implied in the phrase "went without the meat," as if meat were something they expected to have and didn't get, to be replaced by "bread," a second-best food that is "cursed"). Yet one of the extraordinary people, one of the most admired, kills himself. That gives you an unexpected, uneasy feeling, a feeling of surprise, of anxiety related to the workings of fate. Maybe you can identify a source for that feeling later.
You see some interesting things in "Richard Cory." The poem suggests a whole world of class divisions, based on wealth. Cory isn't a king, but he is like one. People look at him and think he's simply different, and they want to be in his place. Nowhere does the poem contain the phrase class divisions or envy, but you can feel these forces at work nevertheless.
Speculating on what's implied
In the previous two sections, you uncovered many things that are implied or suggested in the poem "Richard Cory" by Edward Arlington Robinson. You're looking for ideas about class and social life in general. So you need to keep asking questions. What questions you ask depend on the poem. Often, you'll be asking about what isn't there, what doesn't happen, what is surprising or confusing.
For example, you may ask, "How well do the 'people of the pavement' know Richard Cory?" Not well, it seems. Almost all the adjectives describe his outward behavior and appearance. He glitters when he walks and is "admirably schooled." He is "imperially slim," "quietly arrayed," "human." The last two descriptions have a little overtone of surprise, as if the "people of the pavement" expect him to be a showoff in his dress and condescending when he speaks to them. Instead, he dresses "quietly" and speaks in a "human" way.
Maybe you feel less than satisfied with all this description. Ask yourself why. What aren't you getting here? Possibly this: None of these words really penetrate to Cory's personality or intimate concerns. Cory keeps to himself. He is civil to people but not self-revealing. He is known to be rich and have everything that everyone wants. And did you notice what you aren't told about him? He doesn't appear to work for a living. Somebody "schooled" him, but there is no mention of parents, a mate, children, or any emotion or love in his life. Cory's life is so apart from the other people that they can't guess what's going on inside him. They are concerned with their own hard lives, which arouse resentments in them. Meanwhile, Cory has a life that somehow leads to suicide.
The last line of the poem comes as a shock. And notice, the speaker doesn't say, "He shot himself." The speaker is more explicit, which increases the shock: Cory "put a bullet through his head" — a violent moment. In fact, the moment is so violent that you may want to go back over the poem looking for clues that led up to that point. And when you do, you realize that the poem gets darker as it goes on, until you reach the final stanza, with its working, cursing, and suicide. Cory is all the things that make the people wish they had his life and not their own. He is a reminder of the class system, a sign of everything these people want and can't get. Maybe they're looking at him not as a person, but as a symbol of what they want and can't have.
Many people have taken away this implication from "Richard Cory": All his riches couldn't buy happiness. This is a perfectly good moral to the story, if you're looking for one. But see how much more our speculations have revealed: the frustrations of class, the deceptive nature of social life, the way people can hide great suffering from others, the brute facts that we envy other people and sometimes hate our own lives. That speculation brings you a lot more than a simple moral to the story.
| When interpreting poems, start with what's explicit. Then begin to consider what's suggested or implied and speculate on those suggestions. Try to build up an account of why you feel the way you do. |
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