It's one of my favourite poems. — Dawnstorm

I like the poem a lot and I really like your explication. Is what you've written intended to be about meaning? It doesn't seem so to me. I wrote earlier in this thread and elsewhere that I don't think poems mean anything beyond the experience of the person reading or listening to it. Your post seems more like an explanation of how the poet has used language to help us share that experience.

I'm not sure I could do the kind of explication you have, but you've made me want to try.

I'm guessing it's that linebreaks slow you down, and you pay more attention to the words in themselves. — Dawnstorm

That's definitely part of it. I try to pay a lot of intention to different kinds of pauses when I write. They can be very expressive. Commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, ellipses, line breaks, line spaces, paragraph breaks - each provide a different kind of pause. They allow for a lot of distinctness and subtlety. Even in my version of the Williams' poem, the short phrases and sentences and the punctuation brought me to a sharp stop in some places. If I had read the sentence first, maybe I would have edited it to change the rhythmic structure like I did with your poem about a cat earlier in this thread to make it a poem. Or maybe I was wrong and my edit to the Williams poem was a poem after all.

I think the visual layout is significant too, even if only as a sign that says "Look, poem here." Once I received an email with four short lines with line breaks after each. No rhyme. No particular meter. The email program gave me the choice of three prepackaged responses I could send just by pushing a button - "Beautiful poem", "Love it!", "I like it!". So, my email program thought it was a poem, even though it wasn't.

Always a pleasure to read someone's thoughts with substantive background. This was beautiful to read. Exactly what I'm after.

Also, a beautiful poem. I'm clearly colored by your reading ;), but nothing wrong with that -- I can feel that tension between how the poem reads, slower and contemplative, savoring the ideas, and then a conclusion drawn in the same way that stands in stark contrast to the way the poem reads. Very cool affect on me.

Keeping with rule 1, I'll have a go at adding an interpretation rather than just wacky ideas --

***
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

***

First time I came across this poem was at a poetry reading we used to do back in college for fun -- gather round a circle at someone's home with some poetry books and go round-robin sharing poems. It was also my introduction to Williams Carlos Williams.

It was so short, in relation to all the poems we were reading, it immediately made me laugh. Ever since I've returned to read it I don't even know how many times now, and it still makes me smile.

For me the breaks serve as one beat pauses, and the breaks between stanzas serve as two beat pauses -- though reading it again I think I actually give a three beat pause for the second break. When I read it like this, it's like the way the speaker would have said it, had they been there -- sheepish, slow, guilty -- but not so guilty, because the prize really was just that nice. The first two stanzas read like that slow admission of guilt, but then right after asking forgiveness, by way of explaining himself, the speaker relishes in the memory of the stolen plums, and finishes with that memory.

It makes me think of a close relationship you have with someone, and you know them so well that you know their favorite things -- and somehow along the way they kind of became your favorite things, too. So it sort of serves as a poem of familiarity and friendship, even though it's highlighting that part of familiarity where people are maybe too familiar.

Pretty much guaranteed to make me smile every time.

Your post seems more like an explanation of how the poet has used language to help us share that experience. — T Clark

Heh, it's hard for me to separate the two -- I read poems like that, but sloppier than @Dawnstorm -- the figure is as important as the content.

However, this here -- this is what interests me. When I read @Dawnstorm's interpretation of the poem, I found myself able to re-read the poem and feel that interpretation there. In a sense, because of the interpretation, I was able to share in the meaning created.

So I think I'd like to say that the experience of the person reading or listening to a poem is where meaning starts, but there might be more to it than that. There's this element of meaning that can be shared, and is not related to sharing the world, but rather sharing the meaning of the poem together.

One way to think about poetry is that it foregrounds elements bedsides the words that shape our understanding of an utterance.

Tiny example. Hugh Kenner tells a story about Eliot, that returning to England on the ferry, someone called his attention to the white cliffs of Dover and remarked that they didn't look real, to which Eliot responded, "Oh they're real enough," a sentence Kenner takes to have four different meanings depending on which of its four words you emphasize.

Prosody matters enormously to the meaning of a poem.

Prosody matters enormously to the meaning of a poem. — Srap Tasmaner

How does that apply to this poem in particular?

How does that apply to this poem in particular? — T Clark

To the Danielle Hope poem?

Not sure. I don't have any feel for how she writes.

Perhaps I shouldn't have made my remark about prosody sound so universal. Hebrew poetry, for example, is structured semantically, so there's a sort of rhythm of thoughts, rather than sounds. Or so I understand.

Williams I have some feel for, but the rhythm is the hardest part to analyze or explain. Reading "This is just to say" is like unfolding a bit of origami. He's very tricky about how the syntax is broken up over the lines; you unfold the next bit and it's satisfying but then you're not sure where to tug next and suddenly pop the next fold has come open. By the time you get to the very end and it's all laid out, you're not quite sure how you did it. Some of these little poems of his sound like they're sentences, sound urgently and insistently like sentences, but turn out not to be if you look carefully. Some of that is a commitment to spoken vernacular American, in which syntax can be a bit malleable, but some of it is the way lineation offers a competing structure, and that structure is in part rhythmic.

Poetic license, is it like a license to kill?

Meaning tends to influence rhythm as much as the other way round, and different people might emphasise different words. A short Poem:
Danielle Hope, "The Mist at Night" (from The Poet's Voice, 1994):
[...]
It's one of my favourite poems. — Dawnstorm

Thank you.
Your whole post is a pleasure to read. I've saved it for later.
I appreciate you taking a short poem to show how analysis can work to improve understanding.
Yours is what I would call high-level +++ :100:
Your writing clear and confident. Your approach to answering the questions :clap:

I looked up Danielle Hope and found more. So good.

This discussion has been thought-provoking and, for me, a wonderful learning experience.
Eventually, I hope to re-read this short poem and try to understand it better:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me. — Poetry Foundation

I love this. I get the gist and the feel but...there's more...

Thank you :clap:

This discussion has been thought-provoking and, for me, a wonderful learning experience.
Eventually, I hope to re-read this short poem and try to understand it better: — Amity

There's a free 4-week course on FutureLearn:
Poetry: How to read a poem - University of York

"Prosody matters enormously to the meaning of a poem."
— Srap Tasmaner

How does that apply to this poem in particular? — T Clark

No, it's a jingly kind of pop. — Amity

The title and the first two lines of each stanza set us up for feeling slow and reflective. The last four lines run in the rhythm and rhyme of a limerick (minus the first line). The serene mood is undermined to make it, well, funny. If we had been asked to guess the author I would have said Wendy Cope.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=49670

No, it's a jingly kind of pop.
— Amity

The title and the first two lines of each stanza set us up for feeling slow and reflective. The last four lines run in the rhythm and rhyme of a limerick (minus the first line). The serene mood is undermined to make it, well, funny. If we had been asked to guess the author I would have said Wendy Cope.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=49670 — Cuthbert

Ah, you're talking about 'Serenity Prayer' by Brian Bilston. The thoughts just spilled out as I was racking my brain as to what the rhythm reminded me of. Strange the associations... [*]

Send me a slow news day,
a quiet, subdued day,
in which nothing much happens of note,
just the passing of time,
the consumption of wine,
and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.

Grant me a no news day,
a spare-me-your-views day,
in which nothing much happens at all –
a few hours together,
some regional weather,
a day we can barely recall. — Brian Bilston

[*]

The rhythm of the first two lines in each verse reminds me of something heard before.
Possibly a pop song or an advert...
Something along the lines of 'This is not just food. This is M&S food'.
No, it's a jingly kind of pop.
Ah, got it!
The Bangles...
It's just another manic Monday (Woah, woah)
I wish it was Sunday (Woah, woah)
'Cause that's my fun day (Woah, woah, woah, woah)
My I don't have to run day (Woah, woah)
It's just another manic Monday — Amity

***

Wendy Cope, I've actually heard of but can't recall a single poem?!
More to do with my memory. I could relate to her 'Written Rules' very easily. Women of a certain age.
Almost like my post-it reminders...stuck around the house.
'Don't fall for an amusing hunk'. If only...

'Don't live with thirty years of junk -
Those precious things you'll never find.
Stop, if the car is going "clunk".'

Yep. I've not only got my own years but those of my forebears. Sifting through forever and a day.

I enjoyed the bitter-sweet taste. The '-unkiness' of it all. :sparkle:

Wendy Cope, I've actually heard of but can't recall a single poem?! — Amity

Then perhaps you will enjoy:

Two Cures for Love

1. Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2. The easy way: get to know him better. — Wendy Cope

And many more....

Poetry: How to read a poem - University of York — Amity

And my little tribute:

Two ways to read a poem

1. Study hard and analyze it.
2. The easy way: learn it by heart and let it live there.

For me the breaks serve as one beat pauses, and the breaks between stanzas serve as two beat pauses -- though reading it again I think I actually give a three beat pause for the second break. When I read it like this, it's like the way the speaker would have said it, had they been there -- sheepish, slow, guilty -- but not so guilty, because the prize really was just that nice. The first two stanzas read like that slow admission of guilt, but then right after asking forgiveness, by way of explaining himself, the speaker relishes in the memory of the stolen plums, and finishes with that memory. — Moliere

I like this a lot. Sheepish guilt. Sheepish smirky guilt. In the end maybe a bit too smirky. That is what makes it amusing to me.

It makes me think of a close relationship you have with someone, and you know them so well that you know their favorite things -- and somehow along the way they kind of became your favorite things, too. So it sort of serves as a poem of familiarity and friendship, even though it's highlighting that part of familiarity where people are maybe too familiar. — Moliere

I like this too. I see the situation as a man writing a note to a woman, but it could be read differently. They are in an intimate domestic relationship. Man and wife? There may even be a bit of nastiness, competitiveness, in it, as you write "maybe too familiar," but I don't want to oversell that. Maybe more like a brother and sister. The poem is a note he left on the counter. Or maybe stuck on the refrigerator with a magnet.

Williams I have some feel for, but the rhythm is the hardest part to analyze or explain. Reading "This is just to say" is like unfolding a bit of origami. He's very tricky about how the syntax is broken up over the lines; you unfold the next bit and it's satisfying but then you're not sure where to tug next and suddenly pop the next fold has come open. By the time you get to the very end and it's all laid out, you're not quite sure how you did it. Some of these little poems of his sound like they're sentences, sound urgently and insistently like sentences, but turn out not to be if you look carefully. Some of that is a commitment to spoken vernacular American, in which syntax can be a bit malleable, but some of it is the way lineation offers a competing structure, and that structure is in part rhythmic. — Srap Tasmaner

As I mentioned to @Dawnstorm, this is the kind of explication I'd like to be able to do.

This has become one of my all-time favorite discussions.

The easy way: learn it by heart and let it live there. — Cuthbert

Which is why I like short poems. I tried to memorize "Two Tramps in Mud Time," but finally gave up.

This has become one of my all-time favorite discussions. — T Clark

Moi aussi :cool:

I like every which way it turns.

The following poem, “La tombe dit à la rose” (The Grave and the Rose), was written after the death of [Victor] Hugo’s daughter Léopoldine. In his grief, he wrote many poems on the subject, including “Demain, dès l’aube” and “À Villequier.” Her death took a huge toll on Hugo emotionally and was a subject in his work for years after the death.

Original Text:

La tombe dit à la rose :
– Des pleurs dont l’aube t’arrose
Que fais-tu, fleur des amours ?
La rose dit à la tombe :
– Que fais-tu de ce qui tombe
Dans ton gouffre ouvert toujours ?

La rose dit : – Tombeau sombre,
De ces pleurs je fais dans l’ombre
Un parfum d’ambre et de miel.
La tombe dit : – Fleur plaintive,
De chaque âme qui m’arrive
Je fais un ange du ciel !

[...]

English Translation:

Note that the structure is different in the English translation, so it’s not necessarily word-for-word. You’re going to have to study up on the missing vocab using your French dictionary to find those missing links. Since French and English poems are organized differently (remember all that talk about syllables and stress accents?), translations aren’t always simple.

The Grave said to the Rose,
“What of the dews of dawn,
Love’s flower, what end is theirs?”
“And what of spirits flown,
The souls whereon doth close
The tomb’s mouth unawares?”
The Rose said to the Grave.

The Rose said, “In the shade
From the dawn’s tears is made
A perfume faint and strange,
Amber and honey sweet.”
“And all the spirits fleet
Do suffer a sky-change,
More strangely than the dew,
To God’s own angels new,”
The Grave said to the Rose.
— 3 Short French Poems for Language Learning

Poetry: How to read a poem - University of York
— Amity

And my little tribute:

Two ways to read a poem

1. Study hard and analyze it.
2. The easy way: learn it by heart and let it live there. — Cuthbert

I'm sure there must be a third way. There always is. Goldilocks tells me so...

Two Cures for Love

1. Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2. The easy way: get to know him better.
— Wendy Cope

And many more.... — Cuthbert

Where are you finding them? The short form suits me well :flower:

So, a simple couplet. Clever; reflecting title and theme.
What do you think/feel when you read it?

1. I think nothing is that simple. Silence is not golden.
And there is a bit of a :joke: in 2.

Definitely easy to remember, as if that was all there is to it :broken: :heart:
But I guess it can be seen as one of those bitter-sweet reminders...
She seems to like her Written Rules. What is it about her?

Are triplets rare? In poetry...

Is that really how it is written?
Not like this:

Don’t see him.
Don’t phone or write a letter.
The easy way: get to know him better.

:chin:

And my little tribute: — Cuthbert

I'm slow on the uptake. Love the Cope and Cuthbert couplet comparisons 1. and 2. :up:

And now my favourite language. Italian. L'italiano è la lingua della musica :cool:

Listen as you read the poem below:


Il lampo (The Lightning)

by Giovanni Pascoli

E cielo e terra si mostrò qual era:

la terra ansante, livida, in sussulto;

il cielo ingombro, tragico, disfatto:

bianca bianca nel tacito tumulto

una casa apparì sparì d’un tratto;

come un occhio, che, largo, esterrefatto,

s’aprì si chiuse, nella notte nera.

***

How does the English compare?

And sky and earth showed what they were like:

the earth panting, livid, in a jolt;

the sky burdened, tragic, exhausted:

white white in the silent tumult

a house appeared disappeared in the blink of an eye;

like an eyeball, that, enlarged, horrified,

opened and closed itself, in the pitch-black night.

***

5 more here:
https://talkinitalian.com/italian-poems/

I've always liked "The Song of Hiawatha" by Wordsworth. A link:

https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=288 — T Clark

I'm sorry I passed this by.
Thank you for the link. I didn't know much about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (HWL).
Turns out he was quite the traveller and loved languages.

His trip began in 1826 and lasted three years. It was the first of a number in his lifetime that would take him throughout Europe, lead to the acquisition or mastery of seven languages, and introduce him to both classical literatures and the living authors of many countries. From this first trip also came his first youthful book and some indication of his literary temperament. It was a meditative travelogue called Outre Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea (1835)
[...]
He was, we might say, a completely literary man: imaginatively engaged with works of literary genius; generous to other writers, whom he translated and published regularly; and in love with the act of writing and the power of language. "Study of languages…" he wrote to his family on that first trip to Europe, "is like being born again." — hwlongfellow

Poetic Phrases we use without knowing from whence they came:
HWL - The Theologian’s Tale, Part IV, Verse 1

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. — HWL - The Theologian's Tale, Part IV

FutureLearn course quite good. One student commented that he enjoyed listening to poetry podcasts gaining a better appreciation of old and new poets/poems.

I hadn't even thought of podcasts. There are 1,000's millions of them!
https://podcastreview.org/list/best-poetry-podcasts/

Here's one on Emily Dickinson:

Frank [Skinner] went on holiday with Emily Dickinson and came back in love with her poetry. The poems referenced are ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’, ‘One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted’ and ‘A Wind That Rose’ by Emily Dickinson. — Planet Radio

https://planetradio.co.uk/podcasts/frank-skinner-poetry-podcast/id-2087857/

And from Scotland but not only Scottish poets:
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcasts/

For example:

Beverley Bie Brahic is a Canadian poet and translator who lives in Paris, France and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the Forward Prize and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her translations include Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. Suzannah V. Evans spoke with her at StAnza 2020, where she discussed how translating poetry inspires her own work, owning a secret shelf of erotic literature, and being a ‘selfish translator’.

If I heard right, she prefers descriptions to meaning. Doesn't believe in meaning. About 5mins in.
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/beverley-bie-brahic/

While browsing for poems -- I have never before ventured down the path of The Wasteland until now. And I really did love it. I read an essay beforehand, knowing that the poem is notoriously difficult, and she suggested to sit at home with the sound of the poem rather than starting out with the analytic approach of trying to understand all the references, or even all the images! I can feel the cohesive mood in the poem, but the ending mystifies me. — Moliere

I haven't read The Wasteland, have to admit I'd never even heard of it.
I'm interested in 'the sound of the poem', so I searched Librivox:

There are quite a few readings but this one sounds good to my ears. It is last in a selection of 60.
(I was delighted to find 'The Owl and the Pussycat', a childhood favourite, easy to remember and recite.)

https://librivox.org/poetic-duets-by-various/

Again, do you have a source for your claim about 'modern poets' - who are they and where do they assert that 'formalities are not necessary to convey meaning?
— Amity

Mostly just using T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland as a standin for the category, since the essay I read pretty much treated it as a sort of revolutionary moment in poetry, where I thought it was clear he was inventing his own form and following it -- and certainly I felt the meaning that was there, the mood, the imagery... assertion isn't the right word, but I'm claiming that T.S. Elliot shows with this poem that we don't need the classical forms to convey meaning, (though maybe that's controversial! Others might say that it's clearly meaningless because it doesn't follow the forms....) — Moliere

Well, I'm not sure that you can make a general claim about 'modern poets' from a single, stand out example of 'Modernism':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land

But I don't really understand what point you are trying to make.
Meaning is there, no matter the form.

As for TSE, I've just been reading about him and others on the FutureLearn course.
There's a range of writing on tradition: what it is, the different forms it can take, and how writers may or may not feel they belong in a given tradition. There are perspectives, including feminist innovation, but it starts off with this:

'Tradition and the Individual Talent’ - T. S. Eliot

“Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves… a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense… is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.”

We can ask questions about 'tradition' and whether it is true that 'if you want it you must obtain it by great labour'. There seems to be a contradiction...

TSE seems to appreciate tradition as involving a perception, a historical sense.
Recognising the past as part of the present.

It isn't clear to me that any 'inventions of new forms' show that 'we don't need classical forms to convey meaning'. Meaning is where we find it in any shape or form.
Again, I'm probably not fully understanding the issue at hand.
I see poetry like any other kind of art as different strands evolving. 'Revolutionary'...it makes it seem like there's a war between different factions. Even if there is push-back, then isn't it the case that the 'new' then becomes another 'tradition'? A rich tapestry of many colours.
There are different 'traditions' (and forms) - some more open and inclusive than others.

Previously, I posted poetry about current Ukranian war by female poets. Who read or responded?
I was trying to move beyond English male-dominated, traditional poems.
It's difficult even to think of 'foreign' WWI poetry.

IV. Soldati (Giuseppe Ungaretti)
The next poem on our list is by modernist Italian poet, essayist, and journalist Giuseppe Ungaretti who debuted his career in poetry while he was fighting in the trenches during World War 1. Here is his very short poem, Soldati.
— Italian Poems

Soldati (Soldiers)
by Giuseppe Ungaretti (Translated by Matilda Colarossi)

Si sta come

d'autunno

sugli alberi

le foglie

***

We are as

in autumn

on branches

the leaves

***

Soldati - Ungaretti: paraphrase, analysis and commentary:

https://www.scuolissima.com/2018/10/soldati-ungaretti.html