How Does a Poem Mean?

How Does a Poem Mean? by John Ciardi

I'm going to be reading this with Tim and J over the summer; we'll start Monday and plan to read 8-10-ish pages at a time, reading 6 days in the week, and hopefully finishing before Tim goes off to college and J starts school/co-op. Here is our schedule; if you have the book, we'd welcome some conversation as we read and post.

June 29-July 5
Introductory/C.h 1 How Does a Poem mean? pg 663-671
after Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Eve pg 671-677
Ch. 2 A Burble Through the Tulgey Woods pg 678-685
Folk Ballads pg 685-692
Edward pg 692-702
The Yarn of Nancy Bell pg 702-708

July 6-12
Ch. 3 By Rippling Pools pg 709-716
The Haystack in the Floods/The Listeners pg 716-721
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner pg 721-738
Mr. Flood's Party pg 738-744
The Eve of St. Agnes/Death of the Hired Man/Love Song of Alfred Prufrock pg 744-761
Ch. 4 The Words of Poetry pg 762-768

July 13-19
The Word in a Poem pg 768-774
The Phrase as a Form pg 774-781
Pier delle Vigne pg 781-790
6. The Language of good poetry is exact pg 790-795
Burning the Letters pg 796-802
Blue Girls pg 802-811

July 20-26
Poems for Study pg 811-818
Adonais pg 818-830
In Memory of WB Yeats pg 830-836
Dover Beach pg 836-845
Ch. 5 The Sympathetic Contract pg 846-852
When He Who Adores Thee pg 853-858

July 27-Aug 2
Lady, Was It Fair of Thee pg 858-863
Ch. 6 The Image and the Poem pg 864-872
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning pg 872-882
Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat pg 883-892
This is Just to Say pg 892-900
Poems for Study pg 900-910

Aug 3-9
How Do I Love Thee pg 910-919
Ch. 7 The Poem in Motion pg 920-926
With Rue My Heart is Laden pg 926-934
Poems for Guided Study pg 934-945
To Mistress Margaret Hussey pg 946-953
Poems for Individual Analysis pg 953-964

Aug 10-16
Tom O' Bedlam's Song pg 964-972
The 'Revenge' pg 972-984
Early Evening Quarrel pg 984-993
Ch. 8 The Poem in Countermotion pg 994-998
The Fury of Aerial Bombardment pg 998-1004
Before Disaster pg 1005-1013

Aug 17-18
My Luve pg 1013-1022