by Bea Sting

Created on: March 15, 2009   Last Updated: March 21, 2009

I believe every Christian have read poems in the Bible. But are people reading the poetry the right way? I learned how to read a poem when I read two articles which were written by Tremper Longman III.

To read a poem, first, you need to slow down your poems. Usually we read poems as a common book (reading it as if we are scheming), but if you slow down it will make it clearer. While reading, carefully look at every single word written. The more you concentrate; the more you can develop and deeply understand the poem.

Before reading a specific poem, it will help if you know the background of the poem. For example, Psalms 23 is written by David, the second king of Israel. He was a shepherd when he was young (before he was called into the palace). Because he understood how a shepherd thought and acted, he also knew that God is similar to a shepherd; he compared God as his shepherd in this poem. After you know all these facts, then it will make more sense to the reader. If you understand how a shepherd feels or if you are a shepherd yourself, then the ideas in the poem will be closer and more understandable to you than to other people. You will know better the feelings of poet. Sometimes without knowing the background it's hard to understand the feelings the poets have.

To begin reading a poem, how can we read it slow? The first step is to find all the parallel words the poem has. Hebrew poems are written with a parallelism form (so it's easier to find). The parallelism can be similar words or phrases, totally unrelated but similar concepts, or repetitions. After you find all the parallelisms, then you can easily understand the content and what it really means. Inside a parallelism, there might be shown some images.

Also, imagery is a good way to study poems. Sometimes you are reading a poem, and there might be images shown in your mind. Then quickly draw it out or explain in words so the images won't fly away. Those images will help you to understand the poem better. The images in a poem are usually metaphors. The article says, "Metaphors are usually easy to recognize in context because of the striking dissimilarities in the two things being compared." The striking dissimilarities of two things that are being compared in poems makes it easier to know what the poem is going to tell us.

There are many other different and deeper ways to learn poems, but I hope you got some helped from this article.

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