25 abr 2008

How do you read a book of poetry?

1) Pick it up and randomly read a few poems. Repeat until the book has been read.

2) Read from beginning to end. Then go back and randomly re-read a few poems.

3) Read from beginning to end, but skip over some parts. Then randomly go back and try to hit the missing parts.

4) Read every page that begins on a page ending with the digit 1: 1, 11, 21, etc... Then repeat for some other digit until you have read every poem.

I suspect (1) is the normal way of reading for most people. It is for me. I do (3) a lot too. (2) works for shorter books. (4) works well if you've already done (1) but want to make sure you haven't missed anything.

2 comentarios:

Jordan dijo...

What about 5) read the book beginning-to-end quickly until it proposes good reasons to go slower.

Colin dijo...

2) unless it's a big, collected or something, in which case 3) or 1)

Really enjoying the 9,000.