read slowly: a magazine about poetry and classic prose

Philosofiya

An independent magazine about reading poetry and classic prose. We do not publish the texts of literary works and are not connected with the former site on this domain.

Common mistakes

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Most of the time, we dislike a poem not because it's bad or obscure but because we read it differently from the way it was written. A reader's mistakes are predictable and easy to fix. Below are the most common ones and the simple habits that help you shake them.

A poem read in a hurry is like the scenery outside a train window: everything flashed by and nothing stayed.

— From the editors

Reading too fast

We're used to skimming news and messages, grabbing the gist on the fly. That doesn't work with poetry: every syllable matters, and when you read fast you lose the rhythm, and half the meaning goes with it.

How to avoid it: read the poem at least twice, and noticeably slower than ordinary prose. If you catch your eyes racing ahead, go back to the start of the stanza.

Reading only with your eyes

For centuries poems lived in the voice: people read them aloud, sang them, recited them from memory. Read silently, a poem loses its sound, and rhyme and meter fade into barely noticed decoration.

How to avoid it: say at least one stanza aloud or in a whisper. If there are people around, mouth the words silently; even that way you feel the rhythm better.

Skipping the notes

The classics were written for readers of another era. Words that were everyday back then are now obscure or have shifted in meaning, and an allusion that was obvious to contemporaries passes right by us.

How to avoid it: keep the notes open and check them at the first unclear spot. Good editions of the classics include notes for exactly this reason.

A few more common slips

  • Confusing the author with the speaker of the poem: the voice in a poem doesn't have to match the poet's biography.
  • Memorizing without understanding: a text learned mechanically is quickly forgotten and sounds monotonous.
  • Pounding out the meter, hitting every stress so hard that the meaning of the sentence disappears.
  • Looking for the one right answer in a poem, as if it were a school lesson.
  • Jumping straight into a long narrative poem and abandoning it halfway.
  • Taking the text from a random source where it may be garbled or cut.

Five habits of an attentive reader

  1. Reread

    The second reading is almost always richer than the first: you already know where the poem is going, and you notice how it gets there.

  2. Read aloud

    Your voice slows the reading down and makes audible what your eyes skip over.

  3. Keep the notes close

    One explained word can sometimes clear up an entire stanza.

  4. Memorize for meaning

    Learn a whole stanza at a time, once you understand what it's about, and lean on the rhyme rather than on mechanically repeating lines.

  5. Separate the voice from the biography

    Read the poem on its own terms first, and only then the note about the author.

Sources

  • Reference works on verse theory
  • Philosofiya editorial materials

The poets' life dates and the facts about the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum come from reference sources; everything else is described in general terms, without reference to any particular edition. Check with the organizers for the times of poetry evenings, lectures and reading-room hours.