Hello, World!

Dear Reader,

This blog is a little experiment in seeing what would happen if I posted snippets of “close readings” of poems and excerpts from fiction on a semi-regular basis. I have begun by copying the full text of two short papers I wrote as an undergraduate, for the course COMPLIT 121: Poems, Poetry, Worlds. As someone perpetually too embarrassed to review old work, I am rather pleased to find that what I wrote back then is still interesting to revisit. Moreover, I find myself warned by reviewing these materials that I may be repeating myself in more recent projects. It is seriously valuable to re-examine past work.

There is also evidence in these papers that it is not particularly difficult to make observations about poems. It simply requires some time and love. It’s a little odd to me that it doesn’t happen more often.

I know that “close reading” is not an innocent term. Doing analysis of this kind sometimes comes with ignoring broader questions around meaning, particularly in relation to the social or political. Close reading can even threaten to ruin one’s appreciation of a work of art. But it seems evident that most poems are robust creations meant to be re-read, and that they are often so difficult and complex that they don’t make much of an effect unless one takes the time to repeat them like prayers, sing them like songs, or “practice” them like études. I may be a little shy on the socio-political front, but these repetitive reading-motions will surely find their use in the world, provided they are repeated and propagated widely!

And with skill! Indeed, there might be something virtuosic in “performing” a close reading of a poem.

But while I admire products of this kind of virtuosic absorption in the text, I have a certain distaste for the long-winded, difficult, and antisocial nature of many academic publications, or for those which are, on the other hand, so glib and smooth that they are best skimmed. Publications often evince a failure to love.

Could there be a certain value to writing snippets that amount to not much more than observation, instead? Nuggets of seeing, small spans of attention which entrain me to read while also helping out others? Here there shall be no arguments, and the judgments will come from the reader. The main affect shall be one of enthusiasm, of rapt attention. Maybe you are a high school student, a college student, struggling through an amorphous literature class, or a graduate student like me, or even a professor, who needs the treat of some gossip about a text at the end of a long and hard day in isolation. Then this could be a little helpful to you, perhaps? Miniature exercises to sharpen the mind and pen every day. I, for one, just want to read better, and not get overwhelmed by everything there is to read.