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:

Fred: "I didn't like it. Did you like it?"

Daisy: "Yeah, I loved it. I didn't like it at first, but then I got into it and really enjoyed it."

Jimbo: "I hated it. What a piece of crap. It was stupid."

Frank: "It was ok. I could take it or leave it."

Matilda: "I used to like it. Then I read it again and didn't like it at all. My cat likes it, though."

It's a moderately engaging kick to come at a work as something that simply pleases or doesn't please. Talking about your personal tastes can be instructive too, because whenever you claim to like or dislike something, you're defining yourself in a small way. You're saying, "This is who I am. I'm a person who loves fantasy/sci fi. I'm not one of those nerds who likes mysteries or romances." It's reassuring to identify and assert these boundaries; it's probably even part of our natural growth as individuals.

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, um, 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 shiite, "I didn't understand it" is a great place to START, not stop. It's an incredible opportunity to get what is  called, you know, an EDUCATION.

When you look at one of our class readings, try switching 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:

The work as something which affects, enters, envelops, wrangles with and tangles with and cha-chas with YOU, the reader. How does it make you feel, really and exactly? What kind of response does it seem to be inviting or demanding? How does it connect with your life? What challenges does it pose to you intellectualy, emotionally, psychologically? How do you change as a reader, even as a person, when you change what you read? What does a particular work do to your blood pressure? Does it give you a mysterious urge to pee?

The work as an aesthetic object, its own complete world, with its own internal rules and internal harmony. How do its pieces fit together? What are those pieces? What world is created? Forget yourself and your own feelings or ideas, forget the author, forget the circumstances under which the work was created. The work itself is an amazing and internally complete marvel to be examined and contemplated.

The work as a light and a mirror on the world, society, or reality itself. It simply shows us what is there, for good or ill. It helps us to understand the world (or society, or reality), and possibly to see things which we haven't before. It illuminates and clarifies. This can sometimes be very unpleasant!—but kind of a nice unpleasant. The pleasurable pain of grasping some TRUTH, whatever that truth may be (at least, according to a particular author/publisher/culture). In other instances, the work may actually critique or interrogate the world. At the further extreme, its goal may even be to change the world. "Art as a hammer." A poem or play as something which doesn't just show us the world, but DOES something to the world.

The work as the creation and reflection of an author. It reveals another human mind to us, with all of its interests, ills, intricacies. We are given a particular artist's vision. We commune with another person's heart. Through a poem we come to know another human being in a special and especially intimate way not possible by any other means.

The work as an historical and even archeological object. The content of a work doesn't matter so much as the conditions under which it was produced, the way it was produced, its function in a culture, its interest as the creation of a particular place, time, and people. What is this thing, the book, or poem, or story, after all? What's it for? What kind of culture made it? If you were an alien from another galaxy come to Earth, how would this thing—the literary work—appear to you? Why have Earthlings been cranking this stuff out since time immemorial? And why, even today, when they've got the Internet, TV, PodCasts, iPhones, and Imax, do they keep cranking out words on paper??? Why million-mile lines at Barnes and Nobel for Harry Potter?

Sometimes, in your in-class writings, in our in-class discussions, it's certainly permissable to assert whether you liked or didn't like a particular reading. In fact, on occasion, I will openly INVITE this, because it's a great place to START. But you're only allowed to do it once, maybe twice—whether in discussion or in writing—in this particular class. If I hear or read it three times, or if you say or write it without ALSO probing and examining what you're just asserted, I will:

1) sick DEATH EATERS on you;

2) feed you to the BLAIR WITCH;

3) give you to Frankenstein's Monster as his personal Cabbage Patch doll.

Or I may just dock points from your semester score. Really.

P.S. All of the above also applies to this statement: "The assignment was boring." Or "It bored me."

Ok, sure—some of our readings won't leap out at you like Big Bird, Janet Jackson's body parts at the Super Bowl, visually dazzling computer adventure games, or exploding hospitals in The Dark Knight. You can't just sit there and let the work HAPPEN to you. 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 [or stupid, or weird]," STOP and ask yourself the following.

"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. The mere act of MARKING THE TEXT can actually jog ideas and turn on Christmas lights in the head. Really. They've studied this. Moving your hand with a pen in it does something to stimulate the mind. Go figure.

Or: "Ok, so I didn't like this thing. How can I approach it to make it more likeable or interesting?" (It's perfectly ok, by the way, to dislike something. Fully 75.3163 % of the world is unlikeable. But, well, so what. Make it likeable.)

(And by the way again: it's perfectly ok that you don't understand something. I think our public education system has somehow managed to teach us all that failing to understand something is a kind of crime. It isn't. It's the perfect place to start. And the psyche works in such funny ways—sometimes you have to "not understand something" for a month, a year, five years before BING! it suddenly makes sense. It's like your brain has a digestive system and sometimes it takes its sweet time.)

(And by the way yet AGAIN: strangeness is your friend. Just because a thing is weird doesn't mean it's bad or stupid. Don't freak when an alien piece of literature leaves you feeling unsettled or even just asking, "Huh?" It's quite possible that the unknown is always uncomfortable at first; maybe even ugly or flat-out disturbing. But once it becomes the known, it may just be the most beautiful thing you've ever encountered.)

Think of our reading assignments as sex. You don't just lay there like banana jello, do you? You seduce meaning and pleasure from what you're encountering.

Consider doing the following, with poetry in particular.

1) RELAX. If you don't understand a line or a passage, so what. Just keep reading.

2)     Second of all, freaking SLOW DOWN. Poems aren't TV commercials. 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, to GET a good grade you may have to suspend all awareness of grades for a bit and just DIG what you're encountering. Sometimes understanding sneaks in through a side door, when you're not looking. 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. 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 class material about the poem 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.    Read it again in ten years. Really.

h.    Come to our next class with specific questions.

9)     Relax, drink 3 beers, near-beers, or whatever it is you like, and read the poem again.

P.S. I invite all manner of responses—ranting or otherwise, in agreement or otherwise. Bring it on.

P.P.S. "There's no place like home." What? What kind of message is that? There's no place like Oz, baby.