Understanding Poetry: Dissecting the Elements Within

In every poem, there are feelings and emotions that are brought forth in a very a few number of words. The three elements of a poem, speaker, imagery, and listener, help to make a poetic story. The speaker; the voice of the poem, conveys the feelings. Poetic words and metaphors create the imagery around the story. The way the poem is read and understood by the listener can have different meanings and effects on people. These aren’t always clearly defined. So how exactly does one understand a poem and the elements within it?

By reading a poem aloud, the speaker of a poem becomes more visible, such as in the poem Richard Cory. The speaker seems to be a man who sees Richard Cory a lot and describes him in such high regard, basically placing him on a pedestal. In understanding the speaker’s station in life and perspective, the question is who he is saying this to and where is he? The way the speaker praises Richard Cory, it is like he is giving a eulogy at a funeral or writing a piece for a local paper. Basically, he is speaking to everyone who had seen Cory and thought of him in the same way as he did. But we don’t know this until the end of the poem.

As for Cinderella, the speaker is a woman. The woman states at the end of every thought “That story.” (Sexton lines 1-109)

Listening to Richard Cory, they hear praise but they could also hear jealously. Of course, they were jealous, he was rich and handsome and made people’s heart race, who wouldn’t be jealous of that? But the things the speaker didn’t know was what was going on in Richard Cory’s head. Money isn’t a “be all end all solution,” just because some people are rich and everyone likes them, there might be an underlying issue going on out of their control. Which sadly for Richard Cory was the case and “…one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.” (Robinson 16) the poor unfortunate