Most of us read poems and stories without reflecting on how we're reading or understanding. We've simply inherited or unconsciously developed a way of reading, and it's just not something we think much about. For many younger readers, the only real approach to an artistic creation is: "Do I like it or not?" Discussion about the work then goes something like this:
Things can get really interesting, though, when we start to come at a poem or story from directions we've never even considered. And the above conversation, after all, can get pretty old. With a bit more effort and awareness, things open up like a gigantic psychedelic geranium. Just asking yourself, for example, WHY you like or dislike something can turn things from black and white to color. One of the first realizations you may have is that, sometimes, when you say that you didn't like something, what you actually mean is, "I didn't understand it." For some readers, that's the end of it. "I didn't get it. Give me something else to read." But shiitie, "I didn't understand it" is a great place to START, not stop. It's an incredible opportunity to get what is When you look at one of our class readings, try switches lenses. Ask yourself, "Here's how I see it. What's another way to see it? I'm paying nine gazillion dollars to attend this stinking college after all; and life is scarily short, a brief candle that goes out, poof, in no time at all; and it's better to burn out than it is to rust etc. etc. There must be windows I've never looked through. Where are they or what are they?"
So ok, here are some windows:
P.S. All of the above also applies to this statement: "The assignment was boring." Or "It bored me." Please don't embarrass us all by openly announcing that you yourself are so boring and your own mind so passive and comotose that you can't see what is incredibly engaging in our assigments. Sure—they won't leap out at you like Big Bird, Brad Pitt (after he bulked up), visually dazzling computer adventure games, or Mel Gibson bludgeoning people on a battlefield. Our assignments require that you be awake, curious, and asking questions continually. I know it's a lot to ask that you actually TURN YOUR OWN MIND ON, that you read ACTIVELY, that you even...GASP, struggle a bit with difficult and innovative material. But, well, this is college after all. Am I being sarcastic enough? The next time you think, "This is boring" about one of the incredible reading assignments offered to you in this class like a treasure chest of gold, you should stop and IMMEDIATELY ask yourself: "What did I just miss?" Or: "Oops! Time to wake up and READ THAT AGAIN." Slowly. Questioningly. Jotting notes in the margins. Underlining anything confusing, wonderful, intriquing, hard. Or: "Oops, I forgot to approach this reading like sex. I just lay there like jello, expecting an orgasm to just sort of happen to me. I did nothing for my partner. I forgot foreplay. I forgot to seduce meaning and pleasure from what I was encountering. After all, sometimes the orgasm which follows LONG, HOT, SLOW foreplay, exploration, active and imaginative give-and-take, is THE freaking best. Or: (especially if you're dealing with poetry) do the following:
2)
Second of all, freaking SLOW DOWN. Poems aren't TV commercials. They don't come at you in millisecond-long blips. They're meant to be savored, enjoyed, re-read, thought about, felt. TV advertisements rarely ask you to actively engage your mind and heart. Poems ask this of your constantly. They're needy little things. They want to be cared about.
3)
Read for voice, texture, sound. Just enjoy language like you did when you were a kid, learning to talk. Yeah, you need a good grade in this class, but, believe it not, you have to sort of suspend that fact for a bit and just DIG what you're encountering. Enjoy whatever odd, new, twisted, or beautiful thing the poet is doing with words, even it you don't completely get it.
4)
Don't read the poem the way you read a newspaper. You're not reading for INFORMATION. You're reading for the experience of the poem itself. Its main "meaning" or meanings are generally conveyed through nuance, suggestion, intuitive association—not in-your-face-VCR repair manual-1-2-3-frontal lobe-quiz tomorrow-utilitarian-completely conscious REASON.
5)
Read the poem aloud, SLOWLY. 6) Copy the whole poem. Just type the thing exactly, word for word. 7) Print the poem out and hang it on your refrigerator.
8)
If, when reading a particular poem, you're utterly lost, don't understand a thing, and aren't getting anything whatsoever out of it, do the following: a. Relax. b. Go back over the piece, line by line, and mark the FIRST place where you get confused. c. Ask yourself at least 3 questions about that precise point in the poem. d. Imagine possible answers to your questions. e. Look up answers to those questions on the Web, use a freaking dictionary, call a classmate, or email your instructor. f. Re-read or skim any relevant Norton introductory material about the period in question or the poet in question. Look for clues and information that will help you know how to APPROACH the poem in question. g. Put the poem away and read it again tomorrow. h. Read it again the next day. i. Read it again the day after that.
j.
Come to class the next day with specific questions. 9) Relax, drink 3 beers, and read the poem again.
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