How Does a Poem Mean? Review

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(More customer reviews)John Ciardi's How Does a Poem Mean? is an intriguing, unorthodox, and surprisingly effective introduction to poetry. He argues that the question: "What Does a Poem Mean?" is too often a self-destroying approach that results in paraphrasing and misses the point of poetry. A poem is to be experienced, not simply interpreted. Unlike prose, a poem is primarily a performance.
How does a poem build itself into a form out of images, ideas, and rhythms? How do these elements become the meaning? How are they inseparable from the meaning? John Ciardi's remarkable textbook answers these questions, makes enjoyable reading, and is a five star introduction to poetry.
This text, published by Houghton Mifflin, was adopted by many colleges in the 1960s and 1970s. Inexpensive, used, soft cover copies are still fairly easy to find.
The eight chapters are titled How Does a Poem Mean?, A Burble Through the Tulgey Wood, By Rippling Pools, The Words of Poetry, The Sympathetic Contract, The Image and the Poem, The Poem in Motion, and The Poem in Countermotion.
I encountered many familiar poems as well as others new to me. Among the latter, I list several to illustrate the wide range of Ciardi's selections (and to remind me to return to these poets): The Listeners (Walter De la Mare), Mr. Flood's Party (Edwin Arlington Robinson), The Death of a Hired Hand (Robert Frost), Burning Love Letters (Howard Moss), Snake (D. H. Lawrence), Blue Girls (John Crowe Ransom), Medusa (Louise Bogan), A Subterranean City (Thomas Lovell Beddoes), and What the Sonnet Is (Eugene Lee Hamilton).
Also, I especially enjoyed three closely related poems: Departmental (Frost), Heaven (Rupert Brooke), and A Deep Discussion (Richard Moore).
Like most collections of poetry, How Does a Poem Mean? is best enjoyed if read in a leisurely fashion over several months. The overall time commitment may be substantial, but John Ciardi's fascinating text will reward your efforts. Take your time. Enjoy yourself. Remember, poetry is to be experienced, not simply analyzed. Cheers.

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The Hotel Cat (New York Review Children's Collection) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is right up there with My Father's Dragon as wonderful first real novels to read aloud to young children. It is lyrical and full of emotion, without having anything in it that might be frightening to a young child. The issues that Tom, the Hotel Cat, faces, are some of the big ones for five year olds. He is young, in a world that is old, and he hopes to find some valuable place for himself in that old intimidating world; and he longs to make friends, in a social sphere where everybody else, as far as he can tell, are all members already of the same Club. His joy at knowing that behind the door or Room 811 are new friends, who have not forgotten him and look forward to talking with him as eagerly as he with them, has stayed with every one of my children as passionately as it stayed with me 35 years ago. Sadly, it is doing so with the very same worn edition, since The Hotel Cat is long out of print. I hope the New York Review will be inspired by what I trust will be the success of their reissue of The Cat Club to put this back into the market as well.

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One wintry day a lonely stray cat named Tom wanders into the Royal Hotel. He chases mice so well that he is given the job of Hotel Cat. Tired of always spending time in the cellar, Tom ventures upstairs and meets the gentle Mrs. Wilkins, a longtime hotel resident who has the ability to communicate with cats. She encourages Tom to become less bossy and to keep an open mind about the hotel guests. One night, during the winter of New York City's Big Freeze, Tom detects three cats in one of the rooms. It turns out that due to a boiler breakdown in his house, Captain Tinker has brought Jenny Linsky and her brothers, Edward and Checkers, to stay at the hotel until the boiler is fixed. Other homes experience boiler breakdowns, too, and soon other members of the Cat Club can be found staying in rooms at the Royal Hotel. Before long, plans are underway for the Cat Club Stardust Ball, with the help of Tom, who has proved himself helpful and considerate after all. Soon he becomes a "friend forever" of Jenny and her pals.

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