The art of reading poetry

In this book "The Art of Reading Poetry" published by Dar Al-Takween in Damascus, Bloom does not provide critical insights into poets' poetry, but places before us a new objective vision of creative poetry. Therefore, he aims to establish the foundations of reading poetry through analyzing some of the elite's poems. We ask again, did Harold Bloom intend to interpret the poems, or analyze them, or present their connotations, or clarify their mysteries, or seek the psychological motives that made the poet compose his poem in a certain way? The critic Harold Bloom, in his critical analyses, approaches a strong attempt to blend critical theory with Freudian psychoanalysis theory, and for this he tries to offer observations on poetic language and the words chosen by the poet. His research thus focuses on the method the poet invents to connect words with their cultural, social, and literary meanings. The book "The Art of Reading Poetry" is not just a book, but rather a lesson in learning to read this art by discovering the means and techniques used by the poet in weaving his poem, including rhetorical devices such as metaphor, sarcasm, and allusion. According to the book's translator, Basel Al-Masalmah, the figurative expression (kinayah) is part of the poet's game, which Harold Bloom, like metaphor, tries to discover. However, some exclude kinayah from poetry because poetry is fundamentally a figurative structure par excellence, according to Jakobson in terms of sequential and synchronous structures. It is also evident in the poem elements such as imagery, symbolism, density, and metaphor, which require clarification to understand the structure of those elements. Harold Bloom believes that poetry is essentially metaphorical language, meaning a departure from literalism, i.e., transforming from literal meaning to metaphorical meaning. Bloom agrees with Jakobson's view on the figurativeness of poetic language, but according to Bloom, metaphor is a highly specific figure of speech or a transformation from the literal meaning.