If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you

M. H. Abrams, the great literary critic and guide of the imagination, once gave us this admonition: “If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.” In this truth, he warns us against the haste of the mind that seeks only conclusions, skipping past the living experience of language. For poetry is not a puzzle with a solution, nor a locked chest waiting only for its key. Poetry is flesh and breath, rhythm and silence. To rush through it in pursuit of a bare “meaning” is to strip the poem of its very life, leaving behind only a hollow shell.

The ancients knew this, and they lingered with the spoken word as one lingers with song. When Homer’s verses were sung around the fire, no one asked impatiently, What does it mean? They listened to the cadences, the repetitions, the imagery that carried them into the heart of the tale. For the body of the poem is not only in the idea it conveys, but in the way it moves through the senses—through sound, through rhythm, through the unfolding of images that awaken the imagination. To separate meaning from form is to tear soul from body, leaving neither alive.

History offers us luminous examples. Consider the Psalms, sung for centuries across temples and churches. If one were to rush through them, scanning only for doctrinal statements or moral lessons, one would miss their living power. Their strength lies in their repetition, in the rising and falling of their lines, in the poetic form that allows sorrow, joy, and awe to be felt as well as understood. A Psalm read quickly is a lesson; a Psalm read slowly, with reverence, is an encounter with the eternal.

Abrams reminds us that poetry is an experience, not merely an explanation. When we read a line of Keats—“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”—we must pause and taste the music of the words, not rush to a paraphrase like “beauty is lasting.” For that paraphrase misses everything—the softness of sound, the sense of eternity in the rhythm, the way the phrase lingers in memory like a song. The body of the poem is its living presence, and to consume it hastily is to miss its soul.

There is something heroic in resisting the modern temptation to hurry. We live in a world of speed, where information is devoured quickly and discarded even faster. But poetry calls us back to stillness, to slowness, to reverence. To read a poem rightly is to breathe with it, to walk in step with its rhythm, to dwell within it as one dwells within a sacred space. Abrams’s warning is not just about poetry—it is about life itself. If you hurry through seeking only “meaning,” you will miss the richness of the journey, the music of the moment, the very body of existence.

So what lesson must we carry, children of tomorrow? It is this: linger. Do not devour poetry like fast food for the mind. Savor it like bread baked with care, like wine aged in silence. Let the words work upon you slowly, reshaping your heart even before your intellect grasps their meaning. In this way, you will come to know that the body of the poem is as important as its soul, and that the two are one.

Practical wisdom flows. The next time you read a poem, read it aloud. Let your ear feel its rhythm. Pause at its line breaks, listen to its silences, notice its images. Do not seek immediately to translate it into prose, but allow yourself to dwell in its presence. Read it again, and again, until it becomes a rhythm within your own breathing. And in life, practice the same—do not rush through moments for the sake of outcomes, but dwell in them, tasting their texture, their rhythm, their beauty.

Thus Abrams’s words endure: “If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.” Poetry is not a race to a conclusion; it is the flesh of experience, the song of language itself. To honor it, we must read not with haste but with reverence. For in the slowness of poetry, we recover the slowness of the soul, and in that slowness, we learn again how to live.