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[CCBC-Net] Being with a Poem
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From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman>
Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 08:55:49 -0500
Last week I read a new short story collection called "Owning It: Stories about Teens with Disabilities" edited by Donald R. Gallo (Candlewick). The final story in the collection is by Robert Lipsyte and titled "Let's Hear It for Fire Team Bravo." The main character is a teenage boy named Michael who has been diagnosed with testicular cancer. He has a roommate, another teen named Eddie, who is refusing treatment for cancer and shuns attempts to connect. But Eddie likes poetry, and quotes cryptically from one particular poem.
The relationship of the story's narrator to poetry--and to a specific poem--reminded me of our entire discussion, going back to Ruth's initial question in response to the fact that some people dismiss poetry because the don't "understand" it. Ruth asked:
"Don't the words have their own songs, rhythms, surface? Is there a need to go under?"
In the story, when Michael first realizes Eddie is referencing a poem, he reveals, "I hated poetry. I didn't understand it. I thought people who said they did were fakers or people who looked down on me or both."
Later, in an attempt to have something in common with Eddie, he seeks out the poem and memorizes a line or two that he can quote back. But then he spends more time with the poem and discovers, "Maybe you have to be in the mood. After I read B.B.'s poem five or six times in the lounge on the roof, it began to make some sense."
And that's the thing about poetry. It demands that we slow down and spend some time with it. And if you read a poem several times I don't think there is a need "to go under," at least consciously. I think that meaning starts to take shape for the reader. Whether or not it is the author's meaning is a whole different dimension of being with a poem, but it starts by spending that time.
The question of meaning--including the author's meaning--is one that Michael and Eddie do argue about in the story, however. The poem is about sickness, and for Eddie, the poet is saying that you don't have to take it--you don't have to give in to the demands of doctors and others. You can choose to walk away. But Michael sees that one of the keys to getting Eddie to stick it out and agree to treatment is to get him to see that the poet was a fighter. "He didn't wimp out. He went the distance," he tells him.
So meaning matters, too, of course--the meanings we make of the poems we read, and the spaces we can create for discussing what we understand.
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
608/262-9503 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Tue 08 Apr 2008 08:55:49 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 08:55:49 -0500
Last week I read a new short story collection called "Owning It: Stories about Teens with Disabilities" edited by Donald R. Gallo (Candlewick). The final story in the collection is by Robert Lipsyte and titled "Let's Hear It for Fire Team Bravo." The main character is a teenage boy named Michael who has been diagnosed with testicular cancer. He has a roommate, another teen named Eddie, who is refusing treatment for cancer and shuns attempts to connect. But Eddie likes poetry, and quotes cryptically from one particular poem.
The relationship of the story's narrator to poetry--and to a specific poem--reminded me of our entire discussion, going back to Ruth's initial question in response to the fact that some people dismiss poetry because the don't "understand" it. Ruth asked:
"Don't the words have their own songs, rhythms, surface? Is there a need to go under?"
In the story, when Michael first realizes Eddie is referencing a poem, he reveals, "I hated poetry. I didn't understand it. I thought people who said they did were fakers or people who looked down on me or both."
Later, in an attempt to have something in common with Eddie, he seeks out the poem and memorizes a line or two that he can quote back. But then he spends more time with the poem and discovers, "Maybe you have to be in the mood. After I read B.B.'s poem five or six times in the lounge on the roof, it began to make some sense."
And that's the thing about poetry. It demands that we slow down and spend some time with it. And if you read a poem several times I don't think there is a need "to go under," at least consciously. I think that meaning starts to take shape for the reader. Whether or not it is the author's meaning is a whole different dimension of being with a poem, but it starts by spending that time.
The question of meaning--including the author's meaning--is one that Michael and Eddie do argue about in the story, however. The poem is about sickness, and for Eddie, the poet is saying that you don't have to take it--you don't have to give in to the demands of doctors and others. You can choose to walk away. But Michael sees that one of the keys to getting Eddie to stick it out and agree to treatment is to get him to see that the poet was a fighter. "He didn't wimp out. He went the distance," he tells him.
So meaning matters, too, of course--the meanings we make of the poems we read, and the spaces we can create for discussing what we understand.
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
608/262-9503 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Tue 08 Apr 2008 08:55:49 AM CDT
