In this poetry reading comprehension activity, students will read an interview with Jose Garcia Villa about his “Lyric 17” and answer questions.
Interview with Jose Garcia Villa: Reading Comprehension Activity
In this poetry reading comprehension activity, students will read an interview with Jose Garcia Villa about his “Lyric 17” and answer questions. This activity is suited for high school students.
The Activity
The following excerpt is from an interview with the poet Jose Garcia Villa. Jose Garcia Villa has been asked to explain his “Lyric 17.”
First, ask students to conduct a close reading of the poem. Have them make notes, ask questions, and discuss their own interpretations of the work with the class.
Next, read the interview with Jose Garcia Villa together. Compare students’ interpretations with those of the interviewer and poet. Discuss how the poem may be interpreted differently and why students’ interpretations might differ from Jose Garcia Villa’s.
Note how both the poet and interviewer admit that it is not an easy task to give an exact interpretation of an expression, the way one might a work of prose. Remind students that poems are not as explicit as prose, and, as our interviewer states they can sometimes be “[…] difficult to comprehend.”
The Poem: "Lyric 17" by Jose Garcia Villa
“First, a poem must be magical,
Then musical as a sea-gull.
It must be a brightness moving
And hold secret a bird’s flowering.
It must be slender as a bell,
And it must hold fire as well.
It must have the wisdom of bows
And it must kneel like a rose.
It must be able to hear
The luminance of dove and deer.
It must be able to hide
What it seeks, like a bride.
And over all I would like to hover
God, smiling from the poem’s cover.”
— Jose Garcia Villa, Lyrics: II (17)
An Interview with Jose Garcia Villa on "Lyric 17"
The following interview is an excerpt from EnglishTeacher’s Portfolio of Multicultural Activities (1996).
Villa’s lyrical and exquisitely crafted poem “Lyric 17” (Villa, 1942) can serve as the basis for discussing his techniques of poetry. Although the poet did not set out to achieve this end, he does so gracefully and economically. As you shall see, this beautiful poem leads to a unique definition of what a poem should be.
In a taped interview, Villa provided me with an explanation of this poem. Of the first two lines,
First, a poem must be magical,
Then musical as a sea-gull.
Villa said, “These lines mean exactly what they say: That a poem must have magic, and it must be musical."
I asked the poet, “What meaning would you ascribe to the next two lines?”
It must be a brightness moving
And hold secret a bird's flowering.
Villa explains, “There are some brightnesses which are stationary and static, but a poem, like a bird, must fly. This is the difference between prose and poetry. Prose is flat-footed and stationary, poetry soars, flies like a bird. The stationary bird, when first seen, appears like a rosebud. When it begins to fly, it opens up and spreads its wings and blooms like a flower.”
I asked him to explain the images in the fifth and sixth lines,
It must be slender as a bell
And it must hold fire as well.
To these lines, Villa responded, “A poem is economical; it’s slender as a bell, it has no adipose tissue; it’s lean and clean. Poorly written poems should, of necessity, go on a diet, to rid themselves of excess verbiage and adjectives. And by ‘fire’ in the next line, I simply mean that a poem should have a spirit.”
“I have always found the next lines difficult to comprehend,” I confessed:
It must have the wisdom of bows
And it must kneel like a rose.
“You must remember,” Villa said, “some lines and some poems cannot be explained. But let me try. I am speaking of the archer’s bow. A good boy is one that knows when to shoot ,and one that directs the arrow to its mark. Just as a good poem, it never goes astray. To ‘kneel like a rose’ is a metaphor for humility. All fine people are humble and a poem should also be humble, however beautiful it is.”
For the seventh and eighth lines,
It must be able to hear
The luminance of dove and deer.
"There's a good man behind every fine poem. A good poet is usually a good person. 'Luminance' naturally means brightness. When I see a good face, it's a good face and I respond. When I see a bad face, it is a face full of crime, even though he doesn't proclaim his crime. His face proclaims it out loud."
"In other words," I asked, "the poet knows things instinctively?"
"Yes, naturally," Villa answered.
And for the meaning of the next couplet, I prodded Villa to discuss,
It must be able to hide
What it seeks, like a bride.
Villa, without hesitation, began, "A poem must not explicitly state meaning. The reader is supposed to sense it out, feel it. The language itself doesn't tell you, but the substructure behind that language is the real meaning. It is not explicit and declarative. That's why when I say, 'It must have the wisdom of bows,' you must guess at what I mean, and children love to guess at meaning. That's why they love riddles. I used to love riddles as a child."
The final couplet of this rather unorthodox sonnet,
And over all I would like to hover
God, smiling from the poem's cover.
is possibly one of the most beautiful ever written.
"The last line has a masterfully dramatic effect. At the same time, this couplet is, to me, the most mystifying one in the poem," I commented.
Villa nodded and offered this explanation: "When you see a blessed creature, God shines and hovers over that saintly creature. The poem itself creates a God-hood, and the poem radiates Godness. At the same time, God is hovering over it, acknowledging the Godness radiating from the poem, itself, which embodies the spirituality existing in a poem and, at the same time, radiates it to others."
Indeed, there is a Godness to this poem; and there is a God-hood within this poet. Poet Richard Eberhardt understood this, too, evidenced in a review of Villa's work in which hestates:
A pure, startling, and resounding body of poetry, informed with so much legerity and fire, remarkably consistent in its devotion to spiritual reality. The subject matter is formidable, the author a God-driven poet. He arrives at peaks without showing the strenuous effort of climbing; the personal is lost in a blaze of linguistic glories.... (Eberhardt, 1958)
The poet concludes that reading poetry might be compared to enjoying riddles, and that children enjoy solving riddles. Since poetry is neither explicit nor declarative, children must be taught through sheer joy to sense out and feel the meaning. Is there not much of this that goes on when we are "sensing" or drawing conclusions, or making an inference? Perhaps we should become more concerned about providing children with joyous language experiences that will enable them to better understand poetry.
Questions to answer
After reading the poem and interview, divide your class into groups to answer the following questions on Jose Garcia Villa’s “Lyric 17.”
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Compare and contrast your interpretations of "Lyric 17" to Villa's.
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Discuss Villa's comments with your cooperative group to explore other interpretations.
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Were you surprised by any of Villa's explanations? Explain.
Final Task
Interview one of the students in each group about their definition of poetry. Write down these views and follow the same interview format as that used with Villa.
