Why Is a Poem a Poem?

BACK TO "WHY IS A POEM A POEM?"

Musée des Beaux Arts        Version #1    /    Version #2
W.H. Auden

Here are two versions of a poem by W.H. Auden. One is the poem as Auden wrote it; the other was created by Charles O. Hartman and reproduced in his book Free Verse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). Many points raised below originate in his discussion of these two texts and his experience using them in classrooms. Both versions contain exactly the same words and punctuation. They differ only in their lineation. Read them carefully several times, including at least once each aloud. After that, compare the poems. Think first about how the two poems are alike:
  • Each has two stanzas, with each stanza comprised of a single sentence. The first stanza makes a proposition, the second an elaboration or example. Its content is structured, in other words, rather like a sonnet.
  • Syntax is elaborate, tightly composed, like a set piece: perhaps a museum guide's oft repeated speech.

  • The description of the painting is predicated on antithetical pairs of images and ideas: children / the aged, normal children / a miraculous birth, human / animal, a pond / the green sea.

  • The diction is paradoxical, combining the casual and trivial with the formal and profound.

Now look at how the two poems differ. Specifically, how do they differ in tone and emphasis? Which presents the more complex relationship among its various parts? To answer you will first have to consider these more specific questions:
  • Which is easier to understand at first reading?
  • How quickly does each version of the poem move when you read it aloud? 
  • Who is the subject of the phrase "They never forgot"? 
  • How congruent are the line breaks with pauses enforced by syntax & punctuation? Where they are not congruent, what new pauses are introduced by the line breaks?
  • What words are emphasized by the way the lines break? 
  • How are parallelism and antithesis used in the two poems? How congruent are these rhetorical figures with line breaks? 
  • What is the attitude of the speaker to what he or she is saying? bored? interested? conflicted?

If you don't know which is Auden's poem, look for more clues in the texts and make a guess. If you do know which is Auden's poem, what can you learn about the poem's tone and intent by looking at its lineation? And, finally, regardless of which is the "real" poem, which do you prefer? What are you, as a reader, looking for in a poem that makes you prefer one version over the other?


Musée des Beaux Arts #1

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters:
How well they understood its human position;
How it takes place while someone else is eating
Or opening a window orjust walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently,
Passionately waiting for the miraculous birth,
There always must be children
Who did not specially want it to happen,
Skating on a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot that even the dreadful martyrdom
Must run its course anyhow in a corner,
Some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life
And the torturer's horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance:
How everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster;
The ploughman may have heard the splash,
The forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;
The sun shone as it had to on the white legs
Disappearing into the green water;
And the expensive delicate ship
That must have seen something amazing,
A boy failing out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.


Musée des Beaux Arts #2

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Top    /    Version #1    /    Version #2
BACK TO "WHY IS A POEM A POEM?"