<p>How do you guys understand poetry? Do you know of any site that gives you the common word's (ex. thou, dost, thine) meanings? Would it be a good idea to paraphrase the whole piece and see if you can figure it out from there? ... because that's why I'm doing.</p>
<p>INTRODUCTION TO POETRY</p>
<p>I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide</p>
<p>or press an ear against its hive.</p>
<p>I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,</p>
<p>or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.</p>
<p>I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.</p>
<p>But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.</p>
<p>They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.</p>
<p>-Billy Collins</p>
<p>From my experience, it is best to read the poem as a whole and try to determine an overall effect. I hesitate to say "How does it make you feel?", but if you can figure out the essential tone of the poem, you can pretty much piece together the "meaning".</p>
<p>If it's Shakespeare you're talking about and some of the phrases are utterly lost in translation, might I suggest Sparknotes?</p>
<p>My English teacher says poetry has NO hidden meanings. Any meanings you don't see aren't there, so don't fret over not seeing them. Hope that takes the sting out of it.</p>