Tjyylli

A recent question got me thinking about how to criticize poetry well and I realized I am not very good at it. I can do themes, and that's about it. And I'm not even sure that should be covered unless explicitly asked for as was part of the issue in the linked question. So what do you look for? Do you talk about meter and rhyme schemes? Do you mention their use of slant rhyme isn't as successful as they intended it to be? How do you make it a scholarly activity that leaves personal preference for things like uplifting tone completely out of the equation?

Emotional impact.

While critical analysis could get into a lot of factors - structure, vocabulary, form, relations to events and culture, use of poetic language forms, rhythm, flow, themes, all these things that comprise a poem, they are all secondary, and a simple, crude, primitively written couplet can sometimes have a much stronger impact than the most polished, fancy and advanced sonnet or epos. And this is all poetry is about - evoking specific feelings, causing a specific emotional impact - everything it does serves that singular purpose. If it achieves the effect, it's good. If it fails, or the effect is underwhelming or different than intended - say, it bores you, or gives a bad aftertaste of emotional manipulation - then it's bad.

Your critique may include analysis, how the effect is achieved, or what factors prevent the poem from creating the intended impact, and such analysis can include all the elements you want to include, but you must at all times remember they are subservient to the primary goal, just means, not ends.

How do you make it a scholarly activity that leaves personal preference for things like uplifting tone completely out of the equation?

Just like you respect an opponent in sports playing better than you; a rival in a debate pointing out your errors, or trapping you by clever use of eristics. It's wrong to leave out your feelings, because poetry is all about them - but of course the intended impact may be something you personally dislike - e.g. the poem being a pointed satire on a subject you hold in high esteem. In that case treat the poem as a worthy rival, underline strong points, show the weak ones, acknowledge the impact - you don't have to like it or agree with it, but it still works as intended!

+1 SF, emotional impact is important.

But basically the advice is the same: Stay technical. If on first impression, you "don't like" a poem, ask yourself if you weren't intended to like it. To take an extreme fictional example, if the poem is celebrating the assassination of a hated politician, I'm not going to like it. But I can realize I don't like the poem because of its meaning.

To do a proper critique, we must get over that personal emotional reaction to the topic, and critique the technicalities of poem formation intended to create that reaction.

I have not studied poetry, so you may have more examples than I; but I have read rhyming poetry where the rhymes are strained; or the metre is messed up, or words seem forced into the line -- They may be important but they don't fit. The same thing with syllabic elisions (using an apostrophe to replace a voiced letter or eliminate a syllable for the metre or count -- ne'er for "never", am'rous for "amorous", 'tis for "it is"). To me, these can be overdone and seem like crow-barring a word into a poem.

I know there can be patterns emphasis, and patterns of imagery. I know there can be echoes of imagery; e.g. a progression of flower names intended to symbolize various things; purity, virginity, love, death. I know a poem can feel rushed or feel crowded, a result of trying to pack too much story into the wrong form. Poems can be just as much a victim of cliché as novels.

As SF says in their answer, the emotion evoked in the reader is important, but regardless of the emotion, what are the mechanics of evoking it?

Just like when writing a novel, I don't ever want my reader to break their reverie of reading because their attention was drawn to bad writing or mistakes. I want to sustain that flow. I should think in poetry your aim is the same: If the whole point is to manipulate the reader's emotions, then any stray emotions, like irritation at a bumpy ride in the metre or rhyme, is a failure of the poem, because unintended emotion intrudes on their reverie.

That is what you are looking for in critiquing poetry. You want to be led through their their sequence of imagery and emotions and even surprises smoothly, and what you critique is anything that makes the trip not progress smoothly, that seems out of place, that stalls or grates or interrupts the reading. And, where their are opportunities where the author could apply some imagination to make a line or image have a larger impact.

Poetry is a tricky thing.

It works purely on the level of language, by stretching its power beyond the simple "normal" direct communication (like you would have in prose). A poem does not just "say things", nor it just say things "in rhymes". A poem works with different many levels of language that it's hard to understand and to judge easily, like you point out.

Some elements are intrinsic in the poem, so they are easy to identify: metrics, rhythm (remembering that no classic metrics is still metrics), sounds (assonances, rhymes, and such), phrasing (nominal style vs verbal style, etc.). The second level goes to the words chosen and the images they evoke. Some poems use plain language and usual metaphors, other work by juxtaposition of different concepts and images, up to the abstract and symbolic plane.

Ultimately, it all goes to a deeper and invisible layer which requires a lot of culture and understanding of the context. To understand a work of poetry you need to understand the cultural context where it's born. There is a reason why Eliot writes differently than Shakespeare, or Zanzotto writes differently than Foscolo. It's not just about style, or age, but there is a poetical theory behind. Also, if you write a poem today in the same style and language of any masterpiece of 19th century, it won't make a good poem, it will be just ridicolous.

There is a lot beyond the form, and all of this you cannot just tell by reading the poem.

I know it sounds very much anti-romantic, but it's too naive to believe that a poem (as any work of art) lives in itself. I also love to abandon myself into the words and images, but it's too much a simplistic solution. Being a complex and synthetic form of expression, it requires some external hints to fully grasp the meaning and the quality of it.