Reading Ivy
Dear Ivy,
On your blog you wrote this lovely post Don't you have a map. I've been following the links and all. Inside me, I love the way it's written, I think: beautiful, fabulous and the language is scrumptious. But yes, my inborn curiousity drives me to ask...
How was this map born? I would love to know...oh yes...I would love to know.
As I think this, I think about how it is also not necessary to always understand.
I think of how the place where a poet connects with his/her readers is the heart and that intuitive place that sits back and takes a deep breath and says, but that is just lovely.
And so, I find myself arguing with myself, because there is still this part of me that longs to learn more. I sometimes wonder if I was a nosy reporter in another life.
Keep smiling, I love your work.
On your blog you wrote this lovely post Don't you have a map. I've been following the links and all. Inside me, I love the way it's written, I think: beautiful, fabulous and the language is scrumptious. But yes, my inborn curiousity drives me to ask...
How was this map born? I would love to know...oh yes...I would love to know.
As I think this, I think about how it is also not necessary to always understand.
I think of how the place where a poet connects with his/her readers is the heart and that intuitive place that sits back and takes a deep breath and says, but that is just lovely.
And so, I find myself arguing with myself, because there is still this part of me that longs to learn more. I sometimes wonder if I was a nosy reporter in another life
Keep smiling, I love your work.
posted by rcloenen-ruiz at 1:48 PM
2 Comments:
Dear Rochita,
Thank you for your kind letter. I am glad you enjoyed the post -- however, I cannot take credit for it, as Jen Tynes and Erika Howsare are its proponents, and I am merely the work's publisher and host.
I do believe the map is a collaboration between the two writers, as a way of exploring poetics. I find the language has certain elements of the baroque, very ornate and requires time to absorb -- that lovely excess!
Perhaps one can take one's cues from how Eileen Tabios constructs the relationship between her poems and its readers, where the onus of interpretation is placed squarely on the latter. I think there's a certain freedom in reading a work in this way -- there really is no wrong or right way to read and everyone gains whatever story they want from it.
Thanks again for your kind words.
Take care,
Ivy
Ivy, thanks for reading and for posting this.
I think there's a certain freedom in reading a work in this way -- there really is no wrong or right way to read and everyone gains whatever story they want from it.
Yes, I love how this allows the reader/student the room and the flexibility to be himself/herself in the space that is poetry. When I was in school and we had to read poetry, we were made to analyze poems according to a certain pattern...and so there were right answers and wrong answers.
I think this cramped up the way I saw poetry in the sense of if I don't understand or read it the right way then I must be stupid or something like that. These days, I'm learning to relax, to loosen those cramped places and embrace poetry as it embraces me.
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