September 22, 2010

A Ramble On How I Literature.

I prepared a poetry presentation today, and it struck me how different this presentation is going to be than how I normally look at literature.
OR IS IT?
Well, it kind of is.

In general, as a reader, I am a big picture and character person. This is especially true reading short stories and novels. I come up with an overall impression based on gut instinct and reader-response concepts. Sure, when prompted I can point back at the text and find proof, or at least what I’m referring to when I bring stuff like that up. In general, though, it’s all about big sweeps. General character concepts: who they are, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and so on. It’s looking inside the character’s head and seeing how the reader relates to that.

In poetry, though, I tend to get way more detail-oriented. When I really try to read a poem, I look at silly things like the effect of titles, use of line breaks, and punctuation. I see how words line up on the page, and ask why. I look at the little details of construction of the poem and focus on that almost exclusively. I mean, I still form that overall picture of what it’s about, but that’s not what I obsess over, like I do with prose.

At the same time, I guess that’s not really all that different from what I do with prose, because what I’m doing is attempting to figure out the motivations of the poet or speaker. Why would they put a line break there? Why would they use that awkward slant rhyme? I attempt to figure out what the poet is trying to do and figure out what the reader’s reaction to that is. I am treating the poet like a character in a short story; it’s just that the poet’s motivations and so on are manifest in these little decisions, just like a character’s motivations and such are manifest in the little things they do throughout a story. In most situations, I think this really works, as speaker and poet are pretty clearly linked. One always claims that you need to treat the speaker and the poet separately, but most rarely do, and in many situations, it isn’t important to anyway.

It tends to look pretty different from the outside, but I guess it is still me. I’m not totally a New Critic when I look at poetry! Whew. I was worried for a second there.

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