Daily Inspiration Quote by M. H. Abrams

"If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem"

M. H. Abrams, Critic

About this Quote

Abrams is swatting away the most common bad habit of intelligent readers: treating poems like locked boxes with a single correct combination. “Read quickly” isn’t just about speed; it’s about impatience disguised as competence, the modern reflex to extract a takeaway and move on. His punch is anatomical. The “body of the poem” insists that a poem is not a memo; it’s an experience with texture, rhythm, pressure, and pacing. Meaning isn’t waiting at the end like a prize inside a cereal box. It’s produced in the act of reading: in the syntax that delays certainty, in sound patterns that work on you before you can paraphrase them, in images that refuse to line up neatly.

The subtext is a defense of close reading at a moment when literary study was increasingly professionalized and increasingly tempted by summary. Abrams, a central figure in mid-century criticism, helped shape the vocabulary for taking literature seriously without reducing it to biography or moral lesson. His admonition aligns with New Criticism’s suspicion of “what it means” as a shortcut that flattens form into message, even as Abrams himself bridged formal attention with historical awareness.

He also quietly targets a cultural economy built on skimming: the student hunting themes for an essay, the busy adult seeking self-improvement nuggets, the algorithmic world that rewards speed over savoring. Abrams’s point is almost rude in its implications: if you missed the body, you didn’t just misunderstand the poem. You never actually met it.

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Topic	Poetry
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About the Author

M. H. Abrams (July 23, 1912 - April 21, 2015) was a Critic from USA.

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