In section 1, you learned how to identify structures within expository passages in order to unpack and make use of the information they contain. in section 2 you spent time identifying ways that authors try to influence readers to act or respond in some way. expository informational texts are for the most part straightforward, seeking primarily to inform. persuasive texts tend to be less straightforward, indirectly or sometimes directly manipulating the reader's logical, emotional, or ethical sense to bring about change.

section 3 introduces you to a third form of writing, whose primary purpose is to entertain and delight the reader by allowing her to use her imagination to share in the creative experience and perspective of the author. in this section, you will learn how to grasp the meaning of a poem and enjoy the musical qualities that serve to emphasize its meaning.

a few of the questions we will consider include:

what is poetry?
what is its purpose?
how do you read a poem?
why are poems written the way they are?

here is your goal for this lesson:

determine the literal and figurative levels of a poem's meaning, taking into consideration the poem's structural features

what is poetry?
read the following poem carefully to prepare for the discussion that follows.

good hours

i had for my winter evening walk--
no one at all with whom to talk,
but i had the cottages in a row
up to their shining eyes in snow.

and i thought i had the folk within:
i had the sound of a violin;
i had a glimpse through curtain laces
of youthful forms and youthful faces.

i had such company outward bound.
i went till there were no cottages found.
i turned and repented, but coming back
i saw no window but that was black.

over the snow my creaking feet
disturbed the slumbering village street
like profanation, by your leave,
at ten o'clock of a winter eve.

--robert frost, 1916

at first glance, you can certainly tell that a poem is definitely not everyday writing. perhaps the main thing you notice is patterns. in the poem above, all the lines are roughly the same length. they group into bunches of four lines each. the lines rhyme.

looking a little more closely, you begin to see that poetry is highly imaginative--do cottages have shining eyes? in what way? do feet creak? why does the poet say these odd things?

one way to figure out what poetry is is to try to figure out what it isn't. where are the paragraphs? what about a topic sentence? and why doesn't the poet just come out and say what he means?

considering all of these things together, we can say that poetry is imaginative, expressive writing that uses artful patterns of sound and structure to express ideas in ways that only poetry can express. its purpose is to entertain and delight a reader by appealing to the senses and through that appeal to say something worth saying.

most good poems require work to read and understand, but the reward is worth it. the rest of this section will you unpack and enjoy the meaning of a poem and the patterns poets use to express that meaning.

literal reading. the first step in reading any poem is to determine the poem's surface meaning and attempt to state that in your own words. in this sense, the first reading of a poem is a lot like reading any other kind of literature. figuring out surface meaning is critical for understanding the poem overall.

on the surface, in "good hours" the speaker takes a quiet winter evening stroll through a village. he is alone, but not completely since he enjoys the light streaming from the windows of the homes along the way, the movement inside, and the sounds of music. the speaker continues his walk until he reaches the edge of the village. he turns around, but in retracing his steps, he finds that, now ten o'clock, the village is quiet and dark and his footsteps intrusive.

is that it? not yet. we must look at the poem again to see if the surface story points to a deeper meaning. first, practice finding surface meaning on your own with another of frost's poems:

the road not taken

two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry i could not travel both
and be one traveler. long i stood
and looked down one as far as i could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim,
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

and both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black.
oh, i kept the first for another day!
yet knowing how way leads to way,
i doubted if i should ever come back.

i shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and i-
i took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

--robert frost, 1916

question: in the space provided below, describe the surface meaning of "the road not taken" in your own words.