The following poem was not written in the C18, nor is its author a woman. I'm putting it here, though, because it illuminates a very C21 way of looking at poetry.
Respond to this poem with your reflections: How do Collins's students read poetry? How does he think they ought to read poetry? How relevant are his prescriptions for reading poetry written 200 years ago? Don't feel you need to answer all those questions comprehensively! A few sentences that can open up or advance discussion are fine.
Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
(from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.)
Deadline: Monday (1/26), 9am
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7 comments:
It seems as if Billy Collins is a proponent of de-emphasizing author's intent as having a key place in the interpretation of poetry; this purpose may be seen in the fifth stanza. Meaning becomes subjective; you can bring out meanings other than the poet's intent from the text by applying any number or combination of critical approaches. What the writer said does not matter nearly as much as what we (choose to) hear. Collins seeks the latter, whereas the students seems obsessed with the former; the last stanza would seem to validate this.
- Ezra Chang
Collins's students read poetry as if it were a chore. They don't expect to enjoy or get anything out of it. It's just something they have to do for class, and they go about it in an indifferent, detached, and even violent manner.
Collin's prescribes a gentle search through the maze of the poem to find it's inner truth. He does not want his student's to take the poem and and tear it apart forcing an answer from it. When reading literature from a different time sometimes it is easy to go for the method of "beating it with a hose". The words and ideas expressed can be very foreign to a student, and they can easily be tempted to over-analyze, and draw and force conclusions.
For Collin's this seems to be the worst way for his students to understand poetry. He wants a gentle inspection, and a participation in the search. He feels his students should delve into and "water-ski" on top of the poem, both reading the lines and feeling them. Perhaps there needs to be some compromise for the students, not all poems can be understood without a little persuasion, but full force torture should be avoided.
In the reading of 19th century poetry I feel this line should also be toed gently. As readers from the 21st century, many poems cannot be understood unless we persuade a confession from them. Then also sometimes we need to restrict ourselves and not find some answer where there is none. As evidenced by the reading of 'Holt Water', without teasing out and reading deeply the class could not even figure out that her desire was for a toilet break. With the changes in language and custom, reading of early poetry takes not only a gentle look but also a mild forcing of the meaning.
First, to answer the questions. Collins students appear, as has been discussed, to want to derive a deeper meaning than (perhaps) the author meant to put there. It seems that they sacrifice the ability to enjoy or feel the poem by vivisecting it (or "torture"ing if you prefer) in search of some universal truth that may or may not be.
The way that he desires his students to read poetry seems to emphasize the simple enjoyment of it; the feeling that one gets by reveling in an experience such as listening to a bee hive or watching the travails of a doubtless harried and woe begone mouse.
There is no clear, mutually exclusive relationship between the experience of a thing and the analysis of the same. This is key as Collins does NOT appear to reject analysis. After all, a slide when put "up to the light" cannot really BE experienced unless you analyze and interpret what you see. Therefore, I would argue that saying Collins rejects analysis is an oversimplification. It makes more sense to claim that he wants his students to never fall out of touch with the enjoyment of the poem. If it takes some analysis to adjust to the contrary currents and stay on your literary surfboard, so be it.
I would agree that it is wise to be able to simply enjoy a poem. With older poetry one often needs to analyze simply to understand enough of it to be able to enjoy it. Therefore, I would argue that Collins would be in favor of searching for the "meaning" in the poem ONLY as necessary for a fuller enjoyment and experience.
One thing I find very amusing is that we (or perhaps just myself) have failed Collins. He advocates a engagement style by which one puts priority on the experience and feeling of a poem rather than on a detached intellectual search for hidden meaning. There is no small irony in the fact that we (ye humble students) have been tasked, not with experiencing this poem, but with analyzing it.
This labor goes against the very "point" of the poem, yet to know the "point" one must analyze to a depth greater than that required for an enjoyment of the imagery and sound of the poem. We cannot, then, propose to pass ourselves off as a neutral arbiters of a way of thought when we have already violated the rule of the way in question.
Here, I suppose that Collins not only describes the plight of his students facing a poem, whether it be modern or one that was written 300+ years ago, but poses questions to the post collegiate life. The imagery of mice tunneling and blindly groping for light in the darkness work as metaphoric perfection for undergraduate poetic interpretation (at least in my experience), but also in terms of seeking out the larger picture. Withinin this poem, Collins exemplifies the meaning of a close reading. That is, to say, that he draws into question the meaning of a larger existence within the microcosm of this poem whilst purporting the whole thing as a close reading of the poem in and of itself. Collins challenges students and general readers to represent themselves in all of their logical and interpretive capacities.
When Collins ultimately decides that students "[beat] it with a hose to find out what it really means," he speaks for the general impotence of mankind at searching for Meaning, at least in somewhat of an existential form. In the poet's eyes, life is more about feeling blindly around and absorbing whatever palpable beauty surrounds, not about brutish excavation and unearthing. Collins envisions a world in which long lost are the days of pontification here, for everything becomes about brutish extraction of information, regardless of nuance or beauty.
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