10 Years After

Gold Star for Robot Boy

I did my presentation today. Before class started I took a gamble and stopped by my instructor's office. I started out by asking him about how New Critics would view haikus. We talked some about how a very close reading would have to be performed in order to discover the requred tensions that New Critics look for in literature. He suggested that a New Critic would talk about the Eastern writing traditions and how haiku, and the particular haiku, fit in to this tradition. I mentioned Buson's famous haiku about the chill a husband fells stepping on the comb of his dead wife.

This lead into an interesting dicussion about the poem I selected. He mentioned the usual, Hallmark as he phrased it, interpretation of the poem. I asked about the incongruity of having a "paraphrasable core" and, at the same time, allowing a poem "not to mean/ but be." I mentioned Keat's negative capability, holding two opposing ambiguities in the mind at once, suggesting a third interpretation. The second was a cynical opposite to the didactic, "the road less taken has made all the difference."

We talked for around 15 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised, I had heard from fellow students that this instructor was not very helpfull when approached. I can't say that he was helpfull, other than he gave me perhaps a boost of confidence as to the validty of my new criticism interpretation.

I think my presentation stunk. It was very disjointed and I paused a lot to think of what I wanted to say. I felt like I had a big ball of facts and evidence for my view, but lacked a cohesive format to highlight my points. That said, I think I managed to do okay. I scored a 92, an A. Considering everyone else I talked to all scored Bs, I guess that is good.

Still, it would have been nice to have just read 15 syllables to watch the shocked look of fellow students. :)