The text/interpretation, facts/analysis conflict has always been there in education. As I see it, one has to know the facts, know the text, before one can analyze or interpret. Which is why memorization has traditionally been stressed more for elementary school students than for college students. Elementary students neither have a knowledge base from which they can analyze very much, nor do they yet have the mental development to do much analysis or interpretation.

One instance of my favoring analysis/interpretation over facts/memorizing was in my English Literature class in high school. Our exams on Shakespeare were divided approximately equally between details on the plays and essays. At the time, I wanted ALL the exams to be based on essays. The teacher’s reply was, “If you don’t know the facts, how can you argue them?”

Some years later I took a Shakespeare class in college. I read every play twice – remembering what a fellow student in my high school English class had done to get an A.[She later became an MD.] Our classes were mostly discussions. Because I was more familiar with the details, I was able to contribute to the discussions. While the grades were based on essays, my greater knowledge of the details assisted me in the essays. For my efforts, I got the only semester A I had achieved in a high school or college English class. In addition, while English classes from high school on had been drudgery for me, I enjoyed this class.

I guess my high school English teacher was correct in requiring that we know details. He did know his Shakespeare, as he got his Ph.D. in Shakespeare after I had graduated from high school.

English teachers in high school and college killed my love for poetry. I did not like being forced into the “junior literary critic” mold.

Many years later as a substitute teacher in a 5th grade class of “problem kids,” I saw how the teacher had used students reciting poetry to successfully engage them.

After that experience in the classroom, while I never became a big poetry reader, I occasionally would SPEAK out while reading some poetry.

For me, though, poetry is something like music–that is, it enters the mind and heart through a different and more emotional route than ordinary prose.

It is the SPEAKING of poetry that makes it stand out. Just like song lyrics.

I liked very much the rhythmS of the Hopkins poem. I like to speak in irregular rhythms myself. Some modern music also has irregular rhythm. Many interpretations of Chopin, a composer not so modern, also play him in irregular rhythms- which gives a jazzy feeling to a Romantic composer. I don’t know to what degree Chopin composed that way.Not so much a digression as what the Hopkins poem reminded me of.

I think your comment that ‘poetry is something like music’ may explain my mixed response to poetry. At its best it is like great opera, in which the union of words and music is greater than either alone. I doubt if the words of Shakespeare or Robert Browning could be as moving for me in prose as they are in poetry.

Unfortunately for me, in much poetry I either cannot hear the music or the music obscures the words and I just end up befuddled, appreciating neither.

Perhaps it is similar to my limitation in appreciating painting. I am moved by much of the art of the 16th century but by little of what i am told is great art of the 20th century.

Mostly, we usually bully the issue.

But we do venerate those who are sure; we Thank God! for them; and
for that scrub from the outside.

http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=32759

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

…

AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

Now you’ve got me thinking of the Falcon 9. 😀

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, 5
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,–the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plé³d makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

I get some poetry. Robert Service and Max Ehrmann grabbed me at once. I guess I’m a tad lazy and don’t want to have to dig for gold.