[etni] Re: Flogging Billy Collins
- From: Bari Nirenberg <bnirenberg@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: James Backer <drjamesbacker@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2012 17:41:45 +0200
Again, I don't know about that. The message that I get from this poem is
that there isn't a "correct" way to interpret a poem and we shouldn't try
to force one "correct" meaning out of one. At first, my students also
thought that learning this poem was ironic, but when they learned The Road
Not Taken, I asked them if they thought the speaker was satisfied with his
decision. Some said yes and some said no and then they realized that it
didn't matter -- each reader understands the poem as HE wants to understand
it, not as it was supposedly meant to be understood. You take meaning from
a poem by reading it, looking at how it's put together (length of lines,
for example), listening to it and generally experiencing it. Most students
want you to teach them the poem and tell them what the one true meaning
is. I think what Collins is trying to say is that there isn't one true
meaning and each person should experience and understand a poem in his own
way, but not necessarily without guidance. Of course, that's MY
interpretation and you may have your own :-)
Bari
On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 10:22 AM, James Backer <drjamesbacker@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Greetings, all!
> Billy Collins poem is really a nice one: short, easy enough
> to teach, and full of irony for both teachers and students.
>
> The very necessity of using the bureaucratic,
> one-size-fits-all system of HOTS with this poem drives home many of the
> points
> that we teachers, in EFL classrooms, have been making for the last two
> years.
> Obviously, the bureaucrat who included Introduction to Poetry wasnt
> using *real*
> higher order thinking skills that day.
>
> Jimmy
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