by John Barden

Created on: March 04, 2009

You know the myth of Roswell, New Mexico, where a UFO is said to have crashed in 1947; how the U.S. military recovered alien bodies and spacecraft debris from the eerie site; how they transported their extra-worldly treasures to an ordinary hanger in a quickly-made-classified compound called Area 51; how the brightest scientific minds labored for decades to 'reverse engineer' the near magical materials they found there; how some forty years later 'stealth' fighters and bombers roared out over the skies of U.S. air space one night, traveled halfway round the world, and annihilated Iraqi air and land forces intent on subjugating Kuwait - with an arsenal of precision guided ordinance they called 'smart'; and how these unusual, never before seen aircraft then turned arround and came home without a scratch.

If you want to deeply understand or adequately analyze a great poem - a poem so perfect it seems to have originated in the advanced creative imagination of a superior intellect from an alien world - 'back write' it. 'Reverse engineer' it. Try to discover it anew by tasting and feeling and sharing in the original experience of the genius who created it. Move from macro to micro, then back and forth again. Struggle with meaning, tease expression, push out limiting boundaries. Then attempt to imitate the poet by distilling his message down to its intoxicating '200 proof' essentials. Add no water.

Why was the guttural, Anglo-Saxon word chosen over the softer, more harmonizing Latin root? Why the choice of strict form and rhyme and meter over the less evident but no less exacting choice of free form? Why the sinking rather than the elevating mood? What would you have done differently? What can you learn and apply to your own writing by following the poet's lead?

You cannot understand or analyze a poem until you get inside: crawl around the basement in the dark; move upstairs carefully and explore the kitchen, dining room, bathrooms and bedrooms; rifle through the closets; climb the clumsy steps up to the attic and stay a while; be nosey. Ideally, you want to sqweeze yourself through the dormer window and scamper out onto the roof.

You may come to find that very often you appreciate a poem before you understand it. Poems are about feelings and escape elucidation. Like the tune of a popular song you've heard so many times you can't drive it from your head, you will sometimes carry the haunting words and rhythm of a poem around with you awhile before it sings out its meaning.

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