I spent a lot of my formative years cutting literature in little pieces and putting it under microscopes, and my conclusion is that it's usually over-analysed.
You'll find what you're looking for anyway - there are always elements of death, sex and poetic virtuosity, even in the worst of poems, it's just a matter of cutting it in pieces small enough to be reassembled in the shape you want it to be. In the best poems, those elements will be connected to lots of words, images, pictures, symbols, etc. that resonate inside you; the temptation is strong to see what exactly resonates, and how, and to conclude that the author spent hours over every single word to create that very effect on you.
That's bollocks. Poets, with very few exceptions, don't write to be analysed, and they are not aware of the exact sensations the poem will create in the reader. Their genius is that they managed to voice all those symbols in a way that speaks to other people, but they don't do that consciously (and the same poem can speak very differently to different people. Villon goes through periods where he's loved to near-anonymity every other century or so; all teenagers love Rimbaud and then forget about him as they grow up and mature, etc.)
The context of a poem, the flow, you'll recognise on that same semi-instinctive level if you've read enough and have a basic idea of what period it is from, but if you start thinking about what it evokes to you you'll end up with fixed patterns and syllable rhythms and pre-cut ideas you want to paste on the poem and the magic of why and how it speaks to you will be lost.
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You'll find what you're looking for anyway - there are always elements of death, sex and poetic virtuosity, even in the worst of poems, it's just a matter of cutting it in pieces small enough to be reassembled in the shape you want it to be. In the best poems, those elements will be connected to lots of words, images, pictures, symbols, etc. that resonate inside you; the temptation is strong to see what exactly resonates, and how, and to conclude that the author spent hours over every single word to create that very effect on you.
That's bollocks. Poets, with very few exceptions, don't write to be analysed, and they are not aware of the exact sensations the poem will create in the reader. Their genius is that they managed to voice all those symbols in a way that speaks to other people, but they don't do that consciously (and the same poem can speak very differently to different people. Villon goes through periods where he's loved to near-anonymity every other century or so; all teenagers love Rimbaud and then forget about him as they grow up and mature, etc.)
The context of a poem, the flow, you'll recognise on that same semi-instinctive level if you've read enough and have a basic idea of what period it is from, but if you start thinking about what it evokes to you you'll end up with fixed patterns and syllable rhythms and pre-cut ideas you want to paste on the poem and the magic of why and how it speaks to you will be lost.