https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43973/dejection-an-ode

Extract

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetry-101-resources-beginners

“Reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique. Curiosity is a useful attitude, especially when it’s free of preconceived ideas about what poetry is or should be. Effective technique directs your curiosity into asking questions, drawing you into a conversation with the poem.

The goal of careful reading is often to take up a question of meaning, an interpretive question that has more than one answer. Since the form of a poem is part of its meaning (for example, features such as repetition and rhyme may amplify or extend the meaning of a word or idea, adding emphasis, texture, or dimension), questions about form and technique, about the observable features of a poem, provide an effective point of entry for interpretation. To ask some of these questions, you’ll need to develop a good ear for the musical qualities of language, particularly how sound and rhythm relate to meaning. This approach is one of many ways into a poem.

Getting Started: Prior Assumptions

Most readers make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem. The first is assuming that they should understand what they encounter on the first reading, and if they don’t, that something is wrong with them or with the poem. The second is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point. The third is assuming that the poem can mean anything readers want it to mean.”

I lost my kindle paper white today
So searched through all my things in my dismay
Here I found my reading glasses,phone
I found a broken mug and cracked a tray

Then I found the kindle on a chair
But the reading glasses had gone off
I found a plate beneath a book or two
Iris Murdoch   you found  life this  rough

I found all four black handsets to the phone
Then wondered where my office glasses are
It seems my mind is playing little tricks
Thank the Lord I don’t possess a car

Amazed by all the fluff I have swept up
I must  make  my tea in a china cup

Politicians are a dismal group
Where’s the Attlee where’s the Wilson keen?~
Their main aim now is for us to be duped

Where are those lost minds once so acute?
Beveridge and Carrington had dreams
Politicians are a dismal group

The minds of most  have  turned into a soup
Ideas are not connected to good schemes
~Their main aim now is for us to be duped

Many of  the public have turned mute
We won the vote but as yet we’re unweaned
Politicians are  a much loathed group

Yet surely one or two must be astute
What does May say when she meets the Queen?
Their main aim if they have one is dilute

What  is democratic in our strain?
When we all go mad, who takes the blame?
Politicians are a dismal group
Their method’s now the poor to persecute

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/05/did-your-personality-determine-whether-you-voted-brexit-research-suggests

“Even when voters were able to interpret statistics, their ability to do so could be overcome by partisanship. In one striking study, when voters were asked to interpret statistics about whether a skin cream increases or decreases a rash, they were able to interpret them correctly roughly 57 per cent of the time. But when voters were asked to interpret the same set of statistics, but told they were about whether immigration increases or decreases crime, something disturbing happened.

If the statistics didn’t support a voter’s view, their ability to correctly interpret the numbers dropped, in some cases, by almost a half.

Before Remoaners start to crow, this study is not an affirmation that “I’m smart, you’re dumb”. Further research could be done, for example, on the role of age and education (young graduates were far more likely to vote Remain). But in the meantime, there is a question that needs to be answered – are political campaigners deliberately exploiting these personality traits?

Chris Sumner, from the Online Privacy Foundation, warns that in the era of Big Data, clues about our personalities are collected online: “In the era of Big Data, these clues are aggregated, transformed and sold by a burgeoning industry.”

“In our view, part of what makes language artistic is that we have to explore it actively in order to appreciate it.  We may have to look beneath the surface, and think harder about what images the author has used, who the author purports to be, and even how the language is organized.  These efforts can lead to new insights, new perspectives and new experiences.

Poetry is a form in which this reader engagement is particularly striking and important.  It’s a good illustration of the way philosophical work can help awaken us to the richness of the language that surrounds us, even in the seeming cacophony of the digital age.”