I hope these notes will help you in writing your close reading papers due next week. Close Reading 1. Analysis in very fine detail, zoomed in, and preoccupied with the tiniest mechanical efforts of the text. 2. Your comments and evidence should focus on points of style, form, and reactions as a reader. 3. It is an empirical method in that the argument arises from your observations of the poem itself, not from the claims or interpretations of someone else. 4. Read the text several times, and along with the questions you wish to ask of the poem, include these: Your first impression: 1. What is the very first thing you notice? 2. What is the second thing you notice that is not the first but stated differently? 3. Do these complement each other? Do they seem to contradict? (Remember that contradictory or paradoxical impressions found in literature may oftentimes coexist.) Language/Diction: 1. What words stand out to you? Do any repeat? (Be sure to work out what you think they mean in the context of the poem, too.) 2. What is noteworthy or remarkable about these words? 3. Do the words have any relationship to each other? What do they say to or about one another? 4. Are any words odd or out of place in the poem? Why do you think so? 5. Which words appear to have multiple possible meanings? Are they puns? Wordplay? Complex concepts (like love, death, fear, etc.)? 6. If you wish to explore any of these words further and include definitions of them in your paper, email them to me so I can send you an OED entry. (Please no more than 5.) Patterns: 1. Do any images, phrases, concepts, feelings, etc. repeat in the text? Why do you think it repeats at all and especially where it does specifically in the body of the poem? 2. How do these repeated objects figure alongside the poem as a whole? How do you understand the repetition in the context of the entire text? 3. Do the patterns have deeper meaning? Do they come to symbolize something else than what is literally stated? (eg if the color red shows up numerous times in a poem that treats the two broad themes of Love and War, this repeated color as a traditional symbol of the passion, heat, and fire of both love and of warmight suggest a fundamental intermingling of these two human impulses.) 4. Consider the punctuation and syntax. What punctuation marks and mechanical structures of each line seem to matter a great deal? Do they repeat? Do they occur only once? Why do you think this is so? 5. Are there sentences structures, verb conjugations, sentence subjects, etc. that stand out and/or repeat? To what effect on you, the reader? 6. Are there patterns of contradiction and paradox? Are there patterns of unity and coherence? Where, how do they work, and what are the effects? Reader's Reception and Interpretation 1. How do parts of the poem elicit reactions and/or thoughts from the reader? How are characters or plot used as functions of the poem's chief aim or purpose? 2. Are there pronounced descriptions of sensory experience? In other words, what are sounds, colors, smells, textures, tastes, etc. like in the text? Then answer: what is the effect of the poem's precise treatment of the senses? 3. Who is speaking at any given moment? When are they speaking? And to whom are the speaking? Pay careful attention to first person, second person, and third person subjects, especially as they appear as pronouns. (eg "I" and "you" get complicated when you're trying to figure out whom the I and the you refer to. The moment I read "I," I can know it is the speaker of the poem, and yet here I am, having read I," which simultaneously forces me to hear myself in the poem, too.) Reminders 1. The majority of your evidence and analysis should be specific and detailed treatment of how the poem does whatever it is you argue it is about, rather than only what it does. Close Reading assumes skilled reading comprehension and asks us to go a step further in examining the way texts DO and PERFORM things rather than simply are things. 2. Quote is a verb; quotation is the noun. 3. Try to weave in the passages you quote form the poem (ie, your evidence) along with your own writing/claims. This means you can present the evidence while making the claim, rather than wasting time and space divorcing them. (Consider this mock sentence as an example: 'The reader becomes explicitly aware of the poem's temporal anxieties by the third repeated "there will be time" (Eliot 35) in the sixth stanza, which is directly proceeded by the speaker's unanswered question: "Do I dare?" (Eliot 34).' Note that the Close Reading Model Paper on Blackboard has good examples of this.) 4. Review the assignment sheet several times throughout the process of brainstorming, outlining, composing, and revising your paper. 5. You are not augmenting the poem and this is not a creative writing course. We are critics. Do not try and further narrate the poem and the characters/objects which inhabit it. You should see all parts of the poem as functions of the poem's overall meaning/aim/purpose/causation. If the poem includes a female who is speaking about her gained confidence, for example, you should not elaborate or spend very much time at all considering her and her confidence. Think bigger and more conceptually for your claim, and then use the poem's parts to persuade me of that claim. 6. The poem is like a clock. If you break it open, gears and springs and all sorts of things fal out, all of which work together to make the clock do what it does: that is, to REPRESENT time. The poem also REPRESENTS something. It is your job to tell me what that is, to break it open, and then present to me those springs and gears which will reveal how it represents that something at all. I hope these notes will help you in writing your close reading papers due next week. Close Reading 1. Analysis in very fine detail, zoomed in, and preoccupied with the tiniest mechanical efforts of the text. 2. Your comments and evidence should focus on points of style, form, and reactions as a reader. 3. It is an empirical method in that the argument arises from your observations of the poem itself, not from the claims or interpretations of someone else. 4. Read the text several times, and along with the questions you wish to ask of the poem, include these: Your first impression: 1. What is the very first thing you notice? 2. What is the second thing you notice that is not the first but stated differently? 3. Do these complement each other? Do they seem to contradict? (Remember that contradictory or paradoxical impressions found in literature may oftentimes coexist.) Language/Diction: 1. What words stand out to you? Do any repeat? (Be sure to work out what you think they mean in the context of the poem, too.) 2. What is noteworthy or remarkable about these words? 3. Do the words have any relationship to each other? What do they say to or about one another? 4. Are any words odd or out of place in the poem? Why do you think so? 5. Which words appear to have multiple possible meanings? Are they puns? Wordplay? Complex concepts (like love, death, fear, etc.)? 6. If you wish to explore any of these words further and include definitions of them in your paper, email them to me so I can send you an OED entry. (Please no more than 5.) Patterns: 1. Do any images, phrases, concepts, feelings, etc. repeat in the text? Why do you think it repeats at all and especially where it does specifically in the body of the poem? 2. How do these repeated objects figure alongside the poem as a whole? How do you understand the repetition in the context of the entire text? 3. Do the patterns have deeper meaning? Do they come to symbolize something else than what is literally stated? (eg if the color red shows up numerous times in a poem that treats the two broad themes of Love and War, this repeated color as a traditional symbol of the passion, heat, and fire of both love and of warmight suggest a fundamental intermingling of these two human impulses.) 4. Consider the punctuation and syntax. What punctuation marks and mechanical structures of each line seem to matter a great deal? Do they repeat? Do they occur only once? Why do you think this is so? 5. Are there sentences structures, verb conjugations, sentence subjects, etc. that stand out and/or repeat? To what effect on you, the reader? 6. Are there patterns of contradiction and paradox? Are there patterns of unity and coherence? Where, how do they work, and what are the effects? Reader's Reception and Interpretation 1. How do parts of the poem elicit reactions and/or thoughts from the reader? How are characters or plot used as functions of the poem's chief aim or purpose? 2. Are there pronounced descriptions of sensory experience? In other words, what are sounds, colors, smells, textures, tastes, etc. like in the text? Then answer: what is the effect of the poem's precise treatment of the senses? 3. Who is speaking at any given moment? When are they speaking? And to whom are the speaking? Pay careful attention to first person, second person, and third person subjects, especially as they appear as pronouns. (eg "I" and "you" get complicated when you're trying to figure out whom the I and the you refer to. The moment I read "I," I can know it is the speaker of the poem, and yet here I am, having read I," which simultaneously forces me to hear myself in the poem, too.) Reminders 1. The majority of your evidence and analysis should be specific and detailed treatment of how the poem does whatever it is you argue it is about, rather than only what it does. Close Reading assumes skilled reading comprehension and asks us to go a step further in examining the way texts DO and PERFORM things rather than simply are things. 2. Quote is a verb; quotation is the noun. 3. Try to weave in the passages you quote form the poem (ie, your evidence) along with your own writing/claims. This means you can present the evidence while making the claim, rather than wasting time and space divorcing them. (Consider this mock sentence as an example: 'The reader becomes explicitly aware of the poem's temporal anxieties by the third repeated "there will be time" (Eliot 35) in the sixth stanza, which is directly proceeded by the speaker's unanswered question: "Do I dare?" (Eliot 34).' Note that the Close Reading Model Paper on Blackboard has good examples of this.) 4. Review the assignment sheet several times throughout the process of brainstorming, outlining, composing, and revising your paper. 5. You are not augmenting the poem and this is not a creative writing course. We are critics. Do not try and further narrate the poem and the characters/objects which inhabit it. You should see all parts of the poem as functions of the poem's overall meaning/aim/purpose/causation. If the poem includes a female who is speaking about her gained confidence, for example, you should not elaborate or spend very much time at all considering her and her confidence. Think bigger and more conceptually for your claim, and then use the poem's parts to persuade me of that claim. 6. The poem is like a clock. If you break it open, gears and springs and all sorts of things fal out, all of which work together to make the clock do what it does: that is, to REPRESENT time. The poem also REPRESENTS something. It is your job to tell me what that is, to break it open, and then present to me those springs and gears which will reveal how it represents that something at all.