One can't take seriously a review based on ignorance of the simple meaning
of common words. Fortunately in this case it does no damage, as NHI has no
following to speak of.
At 03:08 PM 9/12/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>Hi Chris and All,
>
>I'm just back from reading poetry and talking to several classes of local
>high school students in AP English classes, and I wonder at this assumption
>of a simplistic review being that of "high-schoolers." Admittedly many
>high school readings of poetry, on paper anyway, are simplistic, but
>that's as much a reflection of the educational system, of the models
>that they are expected to write to, as it is of their own sensibility. For
>instance, in these classes where the teacher is much concerned with
>preparing them for the AP test at year's end, a test which is concerned
>only with the proper analysis of poetry, it was the teacher who wanted
>them to view the poems in terms of what they "meant" or what
>they were "about," a sort of instant analysis of what they had just heard.
>So many of their papers and written responses would undoubtedly
>reflect this emphasis on what the poem is "about," analyzing it
>for the kernel of 'meaning' hidden within it. Since I was there as
>a visiting poet, and not an English teacher, I could be as contrary
>as I liked, and when I said that poems were not "about" this or
>that, that what the poem meant was just what it said, that a poem
>is not 'about' feeling but is feeling, many of the students laughed and
>expressed a much more subtle and complex sense. Also, I wonder
>at your saying that these reviews "can't be taken seriously." I think
>anything can be taken seriously, as I took seriously all the replies
>by the various and actual high school students, and the view embodied in these
>reviews (and one could say Houlihan's attack on post-post-post language
>poetry) is that idiot question "what does a poem mean?" The question
>is more interesting than the answer given by the New Hope International
>Reviews which could be baldly put as: I don't know what it means, so
>it's not very good poetry, or perhaps it's not poetry at all. A stupid
>answer, perhaps, rather than an idiot question, of which the second
>is obviously to be preferred. But it does seem to be a question that
>is often asked, that has a certain ubiquity in response to poetry,
>so where's our idiot answer to the idiot question?
>
>Best,
>
>Rebecca
>
>Rebecca Seiferle
>www.thedrunkenboat.com
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