52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
47. How to read a poem: and fall in love with poetry.
I took this with me when I left the Westland Public Library, on the off chance I might be interested eventually. I’m interested now. Hirsch is a former Wayne State University faculty member, and answers the titular question by showing not telling—reading and then explicating a rash of exciting poems without utterly killing them. He argues for the writing and reading of poetry as a dialectic, with the reader as responsible to the final experience as the writer. Hirsch perhaps elevates poetry a little too high, spiritually, as he seems to reject any other basis for spiritual experience— when he reads that spirit’s themes are “night, sleep, death and the stars” he goes outside and stares at the sky, as if that were the pinnacle of spiritual exercise. I would argue that there’s more, and that indeed poetry is sustained by God’s Language and not merely by a sort of numinous materiality. Nevertheless, this introduction is thrilling, and truly the first formal tour I’ve taken through the world of poetry. More, please.
