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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For updates on readings, etc. check my current events page:
http://albany.edu/~joris/CurrentEvents.html
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Pierre Joris
244 Elm Street
Albany NY 12202
h: 518 426 0433
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email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.albany.edu/~joris/
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