Andrew, I’d like to thank you twice: once for the Warning (yes the post is LONG), but also for what you have said. I’ll be honest: I read your post, but I don’t know to what extent I can respond.
First, my excuses: I participate regularly in the CCafés, because I can, and because I get a lot out of them. The timing works for me here in Germany, and, unlike some of the other participants, I care less about the topic than the opportunity to meet up with others “head-on”, so to speak. Consequently, the forums (before and after) demand a bit of attention and time. Second, I let myself be willingly talked into participating in a reading of Bellah/Joas’ _The Axial Age and Its Consequences _, which is anything but an easy read, but because the subject and the participants make me think it would be worth my while to do so. Third, though retired, my time is not my own, just like the rest of you who find themselves in the thick of life. From my vantage point, it doesn’t get “better”, it just gets to be more. You don’t gain anything timewise just because you’re retired.
On the other hand, there is lots I’d like to do: write, think, cogitate, ponder, meditate, reflect, and more, but since there’s only 24 hours in the day, it requires one helluva lot of juggling. The older one gets, the less vibrant one’s reflexes and timing becomes. I like to think I do what I can, but it’s never as much as I would like, and I always have a guilty feeling that I’m neglecting things I should be attending to. Like your post. I’d like to do more, but am having trouble managing all I would like these days.
Be assured, I admire your approach, your enthusiasm, your devotion. I would like to be able to engage poems in the way you describe. I grew up during the “close reading” phase of criticism. I was back at (a German) university when hermeneuticism was battling it out (literally) with critical rationalism and the scientification of literature studies, and the humanities in general. I cared – and still do – about whether art matters and whether there is anyway that we could make more people aware of and receptive to it. My first degree was in teaching, my second closely aligned, and I got sidetracked thereafter, but one’s first love is always one’s true love.
What I’m saying is that while I sincerely appreciate you wanting to get into the nitty-gritty of what’s behind our little discussion here, I don’t think I have the time to do so. Others have their own schedules of course, but what you would like to do takes time.
Don’t get me wrong … it would be time well spent. I see what you are doing as an extension of that close reading I mentioned earlier. That general direction is where I was headed during my studies in Germany. The discipline took a side road; I got hijacked on another road; and it appears that we are now back on a reasonable road toward getting back into the art/literature aspect of texts.
One of the things I like about the Germans is that they don’t really make a distinction between text genres. If you’re good with words in your field, you’re worthy to be called a _Dichter _ (see Cosmos Café [7/9] - Reading and the Body - #15 by achronon). The Germans don’t make the finer distinction Anglos do, between reporting, non-fiction, prose, and poetry. This is one of those cases where less is more. What you are advocating for is, at least as I understand it, more engagement (in every sense of the word) with the text … experience the text … pay attention to that experience. I couldn’t agree more.
But … there is this time thing. Two poems wasn’t starting small. Two poems by black persons wasn’t either. Throw in “male” and “gay” and we’re getting off the charts. How unsmall can it get!? Each of these qualifications adds a dimension to the interpretation, and I don’t mean “the” in any literal or limiting (like, to one) sense of the word. In my mind, there is a text dimension, the sub-literal, if you will: an artifact, words one a page, hand-written or printed, only words. But there was a time, and a place at/in which that happened. And there was a particular person, which a particular background and path of development who encounters these words and thinks it might be a good idea to give them more than passing consideration: the text dimension.
But then there is the meaning dimension to consider. How these words relate to one another. The syntax of each and every subunit of a sentence in that text. This is, I believe, particularly relevant in poetry (though I find a lot of what I’ve read over the past 15-20 years anything but parsimonious, what specific sense is being made. And then we have the personal position of the writer, the one putting the words on the paper or hard disc, or their sexual (or other) preferences, how important their identity is to them, not to speak of the social (neighborhood to nation) and cultural context in which they live. It’s more like making an onion, not peeling one. That takes time and attention. I’m missing the former.
My point, albeit belated, is that I’d really like to get into this, but not exactly now. Yes, I’d be willing to follow along on any discussion that arose here, but a direct engagement of the task-at-hand exceeds my capacities at the moment. Of course, this doesn’t preclude anyone else from engaging the topic at this level. That would be great. I always have the option of following the discussion thread. The asynchronicity challenges some, but sometimes it’s the slowest way to still go.