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closed cultural groups
"In the Icelandic skalds too much clarity is considered a technical fault. The Greeks also required the poet's word to be dark ... Modern schools of lyric ... with their restricted circle of readers ... are a closed cultural group of very ancient descent."
—Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
I'm teaching Intro to Lit for the first time this semester, which means that for pretty much the first time ever I'm attempting to teach poetry. It's an interesting experience. It feels a little bit like my job is to induct a few of these students (and it will be a select few) into that closed cultural circle Huizinga is describing...
College profs often say that you should never try to teach the writers you love the most, because invariably (the truism goes) your students will be bored or indifferent to these writers, and your heart will break. I'm starting to realize that as much as I love the John Ashbery poems in the anthology we're using, I cannot teach them: my appreciation for them is so fundamental that I do not know how to explain them adequately to anyone who is not my double.
That said, here's a nice introductory essay, in the form of a review of a John Ashbery audio-book.
Labels: poetry_commentary, teaching |
Friday, January 30, 2004
6:53 PM
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