There isn’t room in this short lesson to look at
theme in a short story, novel, or play. So this lesson will
introduce you to a few poems. But don’t be frightened:
Reading poetry is really just like reading anything else.
You just have to read a little more carefully and rely a
little more on your sense of observation. You find
theme in poetry the same way you do in other kinds of
writing: by looking for clues in what happens and in the
words the writer uses to describe what happens.
H o w A c t i o n C o n v e y s T h e m e
First, look at an example of how the action of a poem—
what happens in it—leads you to understand the
theme.
Practice Passage 1
Read the following poem by William Blake from his
book
Songs of Experience, published in 1794. Read it out
loud, because poetry is meant to be
heard as well as
read. Then read it again with your pen in hand: Read
actively, making your observations and comments in
the margins. Then answer the questions that follow.
A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
wrath = anger
I was angry with my foe:
foe = enemy
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
wiles = trickery, deceit
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
veiled = concealed
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.
What Happened?
To understand the author’s theme, you need to look
carefully at what happened, and why. Look at each of
the four stanzas (a stanza is a poetic “paragraph”; each
stanza in this poem is four lines long) to track the
action.
What happens in the first stanza?
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