- “Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique.”
To do anything in life is part attitude and technique if you really think about. Not only is it the attitude of the person who conveys or reads in this case, but it is the attitude that the poem itself creates. This can be best described as the tone or emotion a poem instills in its audience. Just with most literary works, understanding something like a poem takes time technique. To be able to find out the true meaning of that small line that seems to be coated with details but yet so small in its bigger picture. To relate your experiences to the poem, in order to dig deeper. Many literary techniques can be utilized to break down a poem to understand it clearly.
2) After reading Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare, the quote above and those two aspects of it were truer than ever. Throughout reading the poem at first, it was confusing to understand what Shakespeare was comparing the person in the poem towards. However, after using literary techniques, I was able to break it down line by line to understand. For example, it states, “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed”. This quote at first baffled me but after reading the line before and after it, I got a clue of what the poem was saying about summer in comparison to the person in the poem. Regarding attitude, I had to slow things down and match the poem’s energy to understand clearly.
One thought on “WEEK 12 Discussion Board Adib Sharif”
Adib, I love your comment that doing anything in life is part attitude and part technique. It’s really true. I think of two people competing for the same job. Both may have technique, but one may have the winning attitude. One specific technique for reading stories that may seem inscrutable (e.g. “Araby”) is to focus on the character. If we look closely at the boy in that story, we can see that he is lonely, isolated, dreamy, and idealistic. We can see how these traits lead him to create a spot of needed light in his life. If we analyze the Grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” we can see the key to the whole story.