Quote:
Originally posted by srjjs
I'm actually unsure whether that would make English better or music worse. Trying overly hard to find meaning in something that, in my opinion, should just be appreciated as is, has greatly reduced my enjoyment of the material in question. (poetry and literature are probably the most notable examples)
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Not to argue with you, because I agree, sometimes things are over analyzed... but poets, novelists, songwriters, these people are word engineers. An English teacher's responsibility is to explain how their structures are put together, what makes them work and why they work. Symbolism can be a nuisance, but it can also be interesting and make you look at something a bit differently. And being able to see something from different view points is a good skill to have in any field.
And to completely show I've gone off the deep-end, compare this past year's game to a poem. So there's this poem called Stack-attack and all of these teams were given the task of interpreting it and figuring it out. Which they did, but funny thing is some of them agreed on it and built robots that were a lot alike, but some came up with completely different answers for it and their robots reflect that. Now, if all the robots that won the competitions were close to the same thing, then they most likely were on to something about what that silly Stack-Attack poem meant. Did seeing so many different robots lessen your enjoyment of the game? Of course, I do realize poetry is not a robot game, words and machines are two different things and not all people love words the way I do (but that's o.k., because I can't stand math
) but they are not completely separate.
Oh, and if anyone is ever serious about submitting poetry, the best book you can possibly get is the Poet's Market book, which is a listing of almost every legitimate small press running in the U.S. (and some presses in other countries) and what they are looking for and how to submit. The 2004 book should be out in late September.
Heidi
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A clean slate. What words will I allow you to write there? Turn off all the lights and in the dark, continue to write and maybe you’ll come up with the story of my life.