Several years ago, you may recall, we took on a "riddle poem" project . . . see my blog post for August 26, 2018. That was kind of fun, I remember.
Well, check this essay out, by Adrienne Raphael, in today's digital edition of the New York Times (it will be in next Sunday's print edition, too). She writes that although the crossword puzzle is a recent invention (1913, in the New York World), the "crossword brain" is as old as . . . Old English riddle poetry. And so, I send you back to my post of August 26, 2018.
An addendum. Raphael, in the essay I refer to above in the link, observes:
Riddles tap into crossword-brain from all angles. First, you have to figure out how the riddle is asking you to think — Is this a straightforward definition? A double entendre? A wordplay-based web? — and then you try to solve.
Same could be said for the poem in front of you when you sit down to read. You have to figure out how it asks you to think--or that's what the relationship should be between you and a successful poem. Sometimes, unlike in a riddle, the poem's "ask" is straightforward and uncomplicated. Sometimes, not.
And as we discussed in our most recent Wednesdays@One salon, any good reading of a poem demands that you engage in multiple ways, "from all angles": emotionally, stylistically, technically. The more a poem asks you to do, generally speaking, the better it's likely to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment