[In the following essay, Clifton reports on her use of Robinson's poem “Richard Cory” together with the Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song of the same title, to help high school students get at issues of authorial intent.]

When I teach poetry I try to lead the students to discover that a poem is not a message, it is an organism, that the words and rhythms and patterns of which it is made are an integral part of its being, and that it is made by plan rather than by accident. Because I love poetry, the poems I use as samples for the students to explore in finding what a poem is are often chosen primarily because they are poems I like, though they do exemplify concepts I want the students to grasp. Thus, as part of one poetry unit for a heterogeneously grouped eleventh-grade English class, I chose “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson to present as an example of the use of carefully chosen detail.

I began by reading the poem aloud, and the students' first comment was, “There's a song called “Richard Cory” by Simon and Garfunkel. “It's real good.” So I asked if anyone could bring a recording of it and delayed discussion of the poem until we had both versions available. The next day we played the song twice, so everyone could catch the words. As I listened, I was struck by the differences between the two versions. Accordingly, I began the discussion by asking whether the Richard Cory of the record was the same as the Richard Cory of the poem. The students reacted immediately to the question, pointing out many of the details Simon and Garfunkel had added to Robinson's poem. For instance, they noticed that in the song Cory is a “banker's only child,” he has “political connections,” he's constantly photographed for the news media, and he has “orgies on his yacht.” This led them back to the poem, where they found that there are no details on the source of Cory's income, and only vague ones about his background. They saw that in the poem Cory is presented as a kingly character in such references as “a gentleman from sole to crown,” “imperially slim,” and “richer than a king.” At this point they realized that in the song, the narrator, a worker like the narrator in the poem, works in Cory's factory. This, they pointed out, makes the Cory of the song at least partly responsible for the narrator's poverty, an irony not present in Robinson's poem.

Now they were ready for the question: “Which Cory do you like better, and why?” They decided that the Richard Cory of the poem was presented as a much nicer person than the one in the song. The Cory of the song was a playboy, a member of the “jet set,” who gained his pleasure at the expense of others and who seemed insincere even in the charity he gave. The friends he had seemed to be hangers-on who liked him only for his money, his charity, his orgies, and his fame. The students saw further that by leaving these details out of the poem and by including phrases like “he was always human when he talked,” Robinson made his Richard Cory a sympathetic character who attempts to meet his fellow townspeople on their own level. They also felt that Cory's loneliness in the poem results from the attitude of the townspeople who kept him at a distance by feeling that “He fluttered pulses when he said ‘Good morning’ / And he glittered when he walked.” At this point one student asked, “Why did Richard Cory kill himself?” Instead of answering, I threw the question back to the group. They realized almost immediately that Robinson's Cory must have killed himself for different reasons from those of Simon's Cory. Finally they decided that, though both Corys were lonely, Robinson's Cory was lonely because of his false friends and his false values.

In answer to my next question, they decided that the suicide in the poem was more tragic than the one in the song because they felt that the pain leading the former to suicide was a result of outside forces rather than of his own weakness and vices. Finally, they brought up the contrast between the narrator in the poem and the one in the song. They pointed out the importance of the refrain in the song which, repeated after each verse, even after the last in which Cory dies, makes the hearer far more aware of the narrator than he is when he reads the poem. They also said that the narrator is much more envious in the song, and much more foolish, because, even after Cory kills himself, the narrator sings, “I wish that I could be, / oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory.”

To sum up what they had learned, I asked them what created all the differences between the two versions, even though the plots were identical. At that point, they were able to see that the details the author selects create the impression he chooses—the point at which I had been aiming from the beginning when I chose to introduce that particular poem. I ended the lesson without asking which version was better—a deliberate move. I believe in respecting what's “theirs” as well as what's “mine,” and, since I enjoyed the song, I could conclude by saying honestly that neither was better, that they were simply different.

You may ask why I took such a roundabout way to reach such a simple conclusion. Why wait a day, get a record player, and take an hour to reach a conclusion I could have told my students in five minutes? First, the lesson was far more impressive taught this way. I'm sure they will remember much longer the conclusions they reached. Second, this method allowed the students to make a material contribution to what happened in the classroom that day. Here, I must admit, coincidence played a large part. But even in the other two classes where I duplicated the lesson, bringing the song in myself, the other benefits of the contrast still occurred. Third, using the contrast brought out the ideas about the poem and about how poetry works much more clearly than teaching Robinson's poem alone would have done. Last, and most important, this method demonstrated to the students the fact that they could understand poetry and its structure on their own, without being told what to think or what to see. This experience was one more step toward their being able to leave the classroom to become readers on their own.