What role can emotions play in informing readers' interpretations of poems? This think-aloud study, with an experimental design, featured 10 college freshmen randomly assigned to 2 groups. The think-aloud (TA) group verbalized thoughts while reading 2 poems, and the think-and-feel-aloud (TFA) group voiced both thoughts and feelings. Participants prompted to TFA identified more poetic devices and reported higher interest in the poems than TA participants. On average, the TFA group also made more elaborative comments than the TA group. These responses often demonstrated a deeper understanding of the poems. TFA readers used 4 different types of elaborations to help them understand poems.