Whether Reading a Poem Is a Matter of Discovery: Comparing "Directive" and "The Forge" Amelie Maurice-Jones College

‘I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering’ (Robert Frost).

The art of discovery has long since marked the progression of humankind through a process of finding unique and unsought information that is able to gradually advance the collective human consciousness. It seems logical, therefore, to determine whether the reading of poetry is a matter of discovery in order to decide the value or significance we should attach to said poems. Robert Frost’s blank verse poem Directive (1874-1963) tracks the grief of a speaker reflecting on bittersweet memories of childhood, and Seamus Heaney’s sonnet The Forge (1969) uses the extended image of a working farrier as a metaphor for the process of writing poetry, and whilst both poems seem to allow for much knowledge to be discovered through the reading process, it becomes apparent that the freedom of the reader to discover concepts becomes restricted by the poet’s manipulation of emotion. Nonetheless, whilst the readers are rendered unable to discover novel concepts through verse, they are eventually able to gage unique perspectives on familiar environments and situations.

The reading of poetry can indeed be perceived to be a process of discovery in...