Your 1st poem from Common Measure 📝

Welcome to Season 1, Poem 1. This week's poem is about reading.

Returning to a book, years later

I did not understand the line 
Til time elapsed, and with it haste, 
Whose charter flight had carried me 
At altitude past poetry.

Whose calculus—that argued thus:
He who eats fastest digests first— 
Caught me in its casuistry:
I ate the canon in a week. 

Then one day I reprise the book 
And, tripling the time it took,
I read the line like it were new.
I walk where heretofore I flew.

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Vocab

Do you know these words yet?

“Casuistry,” clever but false reasoning 

“Canon,” the complete list of books that critics deem essential for literary education in a given language

Explanation (what’s happening in this poem)

The speaker explains that, when they were younger, they read a line of poetry too quickly to understand its significance. They go on to say that they read the whole “canon” in a week (not literally; this is a metaphor for “really quickly”). 

This was misguided. The person who reads (“eats”) the canon first does not digest it first. Rather, they get a traffic jam of food in their stomach.

Lastly, the speaker indicates that they later changed their approach, and read the line slower. This improved their understanding of it. 

Lesson (poetry can be practical)

I did literally so much of this. I would read a poetry book in one sitting, cover to cover, even if it was 170 pages, and barely understand a thing. It was at once exhilarating and useless. 

I would be left with strong impressions of the work, but little discursive knowledge of it. Later, when I felt less pressure to “catch up” on the reading I hadn’t done as a teenager, I began to read more slowly. 

Nowadays I will read a passage of a book over and over again until I understand it. I recommend this practice, because understanding literature is more important than boasting about how much of it you’ve read.

Poem stats

• 12 lines

• Iambic tetrameter

• Rhyme scheme: ABCC DD(slant)CC(slant) EEFF

“There is something quite satisfying about returning to a book that you have read over and over again. Some people re-read their favourite book once a year,” Marijke Terry.