Do Readers Make Meaning was a terrific read. Tying it together with the thinking aloud exercise drove the points made in the article home. I focused on the Gretel poem, and throughout the reading exercise, the students made their own meaning. The funny thing was how intent they were and we all tend to be on finding the “correct” meaning. According to Crosman, there is none, really. There may be the accepted interpretation, but here we are, daily, searching for the “right” meaning, and what a relief it is to think about and relax into the idea that there may not be a right meaning. Certainly, as he mentions, there are the far-fetched ideas that some people bring to the table, but even those may be entertained and perhaps some part of the idea accepted.
When Edith focused in on the idea that Gretel may be about Nazi Europe, I sat up a little straighter. I wondered, could that be. I liked her reference to those events and how she tied them into the poem. (Not to talk about you like you aren’t here, Edith) I do not know the accepted meaning in the poem or accepted analysis, but I like the way the Crosman discussed analysis and the search for meaning. Edith’s analysis, right or wrong according to experts, held water. The group listened to her. She supported her ideas. They were real and based on her knowledge of the poet, the poetry of the time and genre.
I think that as students and I guess teachers, we tend to want to be right, and there is a time for sticking to the mainstream concept of a thing. We gather meaning based on our experience, expertise and insight into a certain subject. We do reflect on and place meaning on certain readings. We are not always spot on according to the mainstream but our ideas have validity.
Crosman says “The text, in other words, supplies me with words, ideas, images, sounds, rhythms, but I make the poem’s meaning by a process of translation. That is what reading is, in fact: translation.” During the poetry reading, the group did in fact translate. JJ asked questions about meaning throughout the discussion. So did Edith. They reached for meaning and discovered meaning. They used their expert and common knowledge to work together in their exploration of meaning. Crosman talks about giving an Ezra Pound poem to a dairy farmer, finding out what that guy thinks. He wonders if the dairyman’s interpretation will include his expertise, milk. He says that we all bring to the table what we know and that knowledge develops the meaning in each work for us.
The expert brings different and rich knowledge to the table. The expert brings with him or her the ability to decipher through expert means. The decisions made about a text by an expert will be different than the decisions made by a novice reader. Nonetheless, the novice reader has put his own meaning into the text or rather, pulled from the text whatever meaning he can.
According to Crosman even the author’s own interpretation of his own work may be ambiguous. That drives home the point that the article makes: that meaning comes as the poem or work is read. A poet begins, as Crosman says of himself, with one idea that morphs as the writing ensues. So then, does the meaning. So then, does what the reader takes from the reading.
Laurel Chinn