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Introduction to Poetry | | |
 Introduction -the need to question
At this very final stage of the poem we need to look for one last time at the poem. The title which
was used at in the last section was NOT
actually the original title of the poem but was introduced to show how important titles are. They act
almost like a signpost telling us what to
expect and how to order our perceptions of hat follows. You may have found that once you had read the
Ben Johnson title then your
interpretation of the elements of the poem changed.Is the 'dull drone', for example the noise of the
crowd in the Olympic stadium waiting for
the race to begin? Other elements of the poem can also be inmterpreted to fit into this new context.
The lesson here is to trust your own perceptions and to be wary of accepting everything you read as
truth. The actual title of the poem, as
used in the published version, is 'Hiroshima' and the poem deals with the dropping of the first atomic
bomb on a Japanese city in August
1945.
Now read the final version of the poem and consider your response to it carefully.
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