Postmarked Poetry
Receive a carefully selected poem each month — poetry made simple: just open and read. Perfect for anyone who wants to effortlessly cultivate the habit of reading poetry but doesn’t know where to start. Each short poem is chosen to spark exploration and introspection as you begin your own poetry journey.
Tips for Reading a Poem
Do not try to understand the poem the first time through.
Just read it from beginning to end: absorb what you can, but keep moving forward. Get an initial impression, the feel for the rhythm, the voice, the mood of the poem. That's it.
Read the poem multiple times.
Poems are like Polaroid pictures that become clearer and clearer to the viewer over time. Every time you read the poem another piece of understanding clicks into place.
This does not mean you need to read the poem five times in one sitting. No need to force it. I will often read a poem through a couple times and then put it aside, the next time I pick it up may be days later. Sometimes that pause is what I needed for more clarity. Sometimes my frame of mind or disposition towards the poem is completely different on account of the space left between my last reading of it.
Your mood, your day, and your life experiences all shape how a poem lands. A poem might mean one thing to you today and something completely different months from now. That’s part of what makes poetry worth returning to.
Listen to the poem being read aloud. Read it aloud yourself.
Hear how the words sound together out loud. As you read, your interpretation of the poem will involuntarily be revealed. This is also why it is helpful to listen to someone else read the poem. Look up a reading online or have a friend read it to you. How was their reading of it different from yours? This exercise alone often reveals something I did not see before. Our biases and assumptions are inevitable: we zero in on certain things which often means overlooking others.
Accept that meaning within the poem is not mutually exclusive.
Poems often have many layers. There is the surface level meaning. The meaning the author intended. The figurative. The paradoxical. The symbolic. The personal.
Understanding these can add to your appreciation of a poem but uncovering one meaning does not discredit another. Hold them all together. Just because the emotional reaction a poem invoked in you was not the intended one does not mean you are doing it “wrong.” It’s another facet, another angle. Viewed through a variety of lenses, clarity begins to crystallize.
Read an analysis.
You don't always need to annotate or dissect a poem to understand it, but sometimes hearing from others gives you more perspective that you would never reach on your own. Do not begin with this step, but only after completing the tips discussed above.
Reading others’ analysis on a poem is especially helpful and enlightening if it is a poem that has been around for a while. It has circulated throughout the minds of humanity and gained consensus on certain points.
Instead of viewing this part of the process as research you should see it in terms of community. Poetry brings people together, it is not meant to exist within the vacuum of your own brain without ultimately leading to human connection.