This is fascinating--it's a hoot and very cool that there is now
apparently a legitimizes branch of study in the physical sciences that
gives specific attention to readers and the activity of reading poetry,
especially in this way, where the sciences take reader-response
seriously, poetry in particular (it occurs to me that Jakobson and
several others, Derrida? Barbara Johnson would (have) love(d) this--I
wonder if these researchers are working at all to compare their work
with anything in the history of rhetoric/textuality?).
That poets "provide" a "script" at least assumes the stage-related,
performativity of readerly/writerly engagement, which is
great!--finally--it comes close to admitting a material basis for the
experience of reading (most often assumed to be limited to only
thought, mind, imagination alone).
Then the assumptions about spatialized text (poems appear one way,
other genres or forms in another). This is great. I'll see if I can
google it up somewhere.
Good stuff--thanks for posting it.
Best Wishes,
Chris Murray
-----Original Message-----
From: Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 17:20:26 -0400
Subject: Poetry is better for the brain
an old friend sent this on, but forgot to give the source:
If literature is food for the mind, then a poem is a banquet,
scientists say.
According to psychologists at Scotland's Dundee and St. Andrews
universities, poetry exercises the mind more than a novel since the
former guaranteed far more eye movement associated with deeper
thought,
reported the daily Scotsman.
People were found to read poems slower, concentrating and re-reading
individual lines more than they did with prose.
Preliminary studies using brain-imaging technology also showed greater
levels of cerebral activity when people listened to poems being read
aloud.
Jane Stabler, a literature expert at St Andrews University and a
member
of the research group, believes poetry may stir latent preferences in
the brain for rhythm and rhymes that develop during childhood.
She claims the intense imagery woven through poems, and techniques
used
by poets to unsettle their readers, force them to think more carefully
about each line.
"There seems to be an almost immediate recognition that this is a
different sort of language that needs to be approached in a way that
will be more attentive to the density of words in poetry," she said.
"It may be because readers are trying to hear the words or recreate
the
imaginary event the poet has provided a script for.
"Also, children seem to be born with a love of rhyme and rhythm. Then
something happens and by the time we see them in the first year at
university many of them are almost frightened of poetry and clamouring
to study the contemporary novel."
To study readers' reactions, the research group focused an infrared
beam on the pupils of their eyes to detect minute movements as they
read.
They found poetry produced all the standard psychological indications
associated with intellectual difficulty, such as slow deliberate
movement, re-reading sections and long pauses.
Even when they used identical content but displayed it in both a poem
format and a prose format, they discovered readers found the poem form
the more difficult to understand.
Stabler said: "When readers decide that something is a poem, they read
in a different way."
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"Lyric poetry has to be exorbitant or not at all." -- Gottfried Benn
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