Animal? Vegetable? Mineral?

"And so I did walk around it, and I looked at all the things that it was, how it looked, and how its shoulders were, and how its legs were and tried to see what kind of animal this was, and eventually I feel I did understand it, its meaning, the how of its meaning." (Ted Berrigan, 'The Business of Writing Poetry' in 'On The Level Everyday')

Here Berrigan is describing his way of reading a poem - specifically 'The Grapevine' by John Ashbery.

It's that time of the year when we select poems for the June exams. How refreshing if a student would not try to "crack the poem" but make some attempt at the "how" of its meaning. We live in hope.