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    C H A P T E R 15

    Reading and Writing


    about Poems
    Chapter Preview
    After reading this chapter, you will be able to
    Identify and analyze the elements of poetry
    Explicate a poem
    Classify types of rhythm
    Write a successful paper about a poem, using a writing process that
    moves from first annotations to final draft

    Elements of Poetry
    The Speaker and the Poet
    The speaker, voice, mask, or persona (Latin for mask) that speaks in a poem is
    not usually identical with the poet who writes it. The poet assumes a role or
    imitates the speech of a person in a particular situation. The nineteenth-century
    English poet Robert Browning, for instance, in “My Last Duchess,” invented a
    Renaissance Italian duke who, in his palace, talks about his first wife and his art
    collection with an emissary from a count who is negotiating to offer his daughter
    in marriage to the duke.
    In reading a poem, then, the first and most important question to ask yourself
    is this: Who is speaking? If an audience and a setting are suggested, keep them in
    mind, too, although they are not always indicated in a poem. Consider, for example,
    the following poem by Emily Dickinson.

    EMILY DICKINSON
    For biographical information on Emily Dickinson, see page 856.

    I'm Nobody! Who are you?


    I’m Nobody! Who are you?
    Are you—Nobody—too?
    Then there’s a pair of us!
    Don’t tell! they’d banish us—you know!
    How dreary—to be—Somebody! 5
    How public—like a Frog—

    766

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    DICKINSON I’m Nobody! Who are you? 767

    To tell your name—the livelong June—


    To an admiring Bog!
    [1861?]

    We cannot quite say that the speaker is Emily Dickinson, although, if we have read
    a fair number of her poems, we can say that the voice in this poem is familiar, and
    perhaps here we can talk of Dickinson rather than of “the speaker of the poem,”
    since this speaker (unlike Browning’s Renaissance duke) clearly is not a figure who
    is utterly remote from the poet.
    Let’s consider the sort of person we hear in “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” (Read
    it aloud to see if you agree with what we say. In fact, you should test each of our
    assertions by reading the poem aloud.)

    friend.

    (“Are you—Nobody—too?”) and invites the reader to join the speaker (“Then
    there’s a pair of us!”), to form a conspiracy of silence against outsiders
    (“Don’t tell!”).
    In “they’d banish us,” however, we hear a word that a child would not be
    likely to use, and we probably feel that the speaker is a shy but (with the right
    companion) playful adult, who here is speaking to an intimate friend, the reader.
    By means of “banish,” a word that brings to mind images of a king’s court, the
    speaker almost comically inflates and thereby makes fun of the “they” who are
    opposed to “us.”
    In the second stanza, or we might better say in the space between the two
    stanzas, the speaker puts aside the childlike manner. In “How dreary,” the first
    words of the second stanza, we hear a sophisticated voice, one might even say a
    world-weary voice or a voice perhaps with more than a touch of condescension.
    But, since by now we are paired with the speaker in a conspiracy against outsiders,
    we enjoy the contrast that the speaker makes between the Nobodies and the Some-
    bodies. Who are these Somebodies, these people who would imperiously “banish”
    the speaker and the friend? What are the Somebodies like?
    How dreary—to be—Somebody!
    How public—like a Frog—
    To tell your name—the livelong June—
    To an admiring Bog!
    The last two lines do at least two things:

    way a Somebody is public (it proclaims its presence all day), and

    is “an admiring Bog”).


    By the end of the poem, we are convinced that it is better to be a Nobody (like
    Dickinson and the reader?) than a Somebody (a loudmouth).
    Dickinson did not always speak in this persona, however. In another poem,
    “Wild Nights—Wild Nights,” probably written in the same year as “I’m Nobody!
    Who are you?,” Dickinson speaks as an impassioned lover, but we need not assume
    that the beloved is actually in the presence of the lover. Since the second line says,

    M15_BARN9149_11_SE_C15_PP3.indd 767 12/30/15 1:58 PM


    768 Chapter 15 Reading and Writing about Poems

    “Were I with Thee,” the reader must assume that the person addressed is not pres-
    ent. The poem represents a state of mind—a sort of talking to oneself—rather than
    an address to another person.

    Wild Nights—Wild Nights


    Wild Nights—Wild Nights,
    Were I with Thee
    Wild Nights should be
    Our luxury
    Futile—the Winds 5
    To a Heart in port—
    Done with the Compass—
    Done with the Chart!
    Rowing in Eden—
    Ah, the Sea! 10
    Might I but moor—Tonight—
    In Thee.

    [c. 1861]

    This speaker is passionately in love. The following questions invite you to look
    more closely at how the speaker of “Wild Nights—Wild Nights” is characterized.

    Joining the Conversation: Critical Thinking and Writing

    1. How does this poem communicate the speaker’s state of mind? For example,
    in the first stanza (lines 1–4), what—beyond the meaning of the words—is
    communicated by the repetition of “Wild Nights”? In the last stanza (lines
    9–12), what is the tone of “Ah, the Sea!”? (“Tone” means something like
    emotional coloring, as for instance a “businesslike tone,” a “bitter tone,” or an
    “eager tone.”)
    2. Paraphrase (that is, put into your own words) the second stanza. What does this
    stanza communicate about the speaker’s love for the beloved? Compare your
    paraphrase and the original. What does the form of the original sentences (the
    omission, for instance, of the verbs of lines 5 and 6 and of the subject in lines
    7 and 8) communicate?
    3. Paraphrase the last stanza. How does “Ah, the Sea!” fit into your paraphrase? If
    you had trouble fitting it in, do you think the poem would be better off without
    it? If not, why not?
    The voice speaking in a poem may have the ring of the author’s own voice,
    and to make a distinction between speaker and author may at times seem perverse.
    Some poetry (especially contemporary American poetry) is highly autobiographi-
    cal. Still, even in autobiographical poems, it may be convenient to distinguish
    between author and speaker. The speaker of a given poem is, let’s say, Sylvia
    Plath in her role as parent, or Sylvia Plath in her role as daughter, not simply Sylvia
    Plath the poet.

    M15_BARN9149_11_SE_C15_PP3.indd 768 12/30/15 1:58 PM

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