- When I look at the quote “Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique” (Hirsch) what comes to mind is feeling and interpretation. For example, your “attitude” could be how you feel about reading poems in general, if you do not enjoy reading poems, then it would be harder for you to interpret the poem versus someone who enjoys reading poems. Also, how you feel while reading the poem plays a part in how you interpret the poem because a happy poem could make you feel sad and your interpretation from the poem would be as such versus someone who would read it in a happier attitude. Your “technique” is how you read the poem and your ability to understand the poet’s style.
- In William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18″ Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” I read it as a love poem. Because I received it as a love poem, my attitude was more open and calmer, and I absorbed the words more. Shakespeare uses a lot of personification in this poem by making nature more humanistic. For example, he says “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed” (Shakespeare lines 6-7). In this line, he is referring to the sun and when the sun sets which is what he means when he says, “his gold complexion dimmed”. In this poem, I interpreted Shakespeare saying that the woman’s beauty is as raw and bright as nature is during the summer because the heat is brutal but it’s bright.
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3 thoughts on “Kiara Gonzalez Discussion Board 12”
Kiara, thanks so much for starting us off with this focused and personal response to the week’s prompt. Thank you for including a response to the sonnet. I urge others to be equally thoughtful and original. Please, everyone, try not to duplicate what others have posted—another reason to jump in early in the week.
Kiara, thank you for the valuable discussion. Definitely the sonet 18, which I also choose for discussion is full of feelings and love for his beloved. However, I consider that comparison of
Her and nature, which the author uses here is built on the fact that everything in nature will fade, what makes him think about about the way how to keep her beauty forever. So, at the same time she is beautiful as nature, but he doesn’t want she to wither like it.
As someone who doesn’t, not enjoying poems definitely makes it more difficult to read and understand them. I agree that the technique in a poem would be how you read it. I believe this goes as far as reading anything. Your technique could be things like annotating or asking questions, which helps you better understand the reading, I also agree that how you read a poem determines your “feelings” for it. Using you as an example, you were reading Sonnet 18 and once you realized it was a love poem it made you open to reading it.