How to Read a Poem

...
when I recall how I've dipped tenderness
into blood, into that never startled
soundless heartblood of things so loved

Toledo, November 1912
p. 25, Rainer Maria Rilke: Uncollected Poems
translated by Edward Snow



Revisiting Rilke, I realized that I'd almost forgotten how achingly beautiful poetry can be--how reading the words make images float, leaving one transfixed after taking them in.

Someone once told me, "teach me how to read this poem," and I said, "I cannot teach, nor show you, how to read poetry. You have to learn it on your own, and that would mean a lifetime of reading. Got that? A lifetime. Read. Drink the words in, turn them over in your mind, sketch and paint them in the colors that they speak to you. You may, or may not, see the story there is in the poem, the nuances in the language, the gradations in its meaning; your well of experiences, in turn, will be the scale that will measure the depth with which it speaks to you. Read, read the words, and love them. And then you would have taught yourself poetry."