This idea is for an online journal focused on Close Readings—Pick a poem, any poem, and go through it with a fine-toothed mental comb and share your understandings/observations/criticism. For an archetypal example of what the online journal would be looking for, please see Charles Alexander’s close reading of Elizabeth Bishop posted to the SUNY-Buffalo Poetics list in April of 2006 at http://tinyurl.com/w3elu.
This idea is for: A website where people can come to view and post their own responses to the fill-in-the-blank question: Poetry is _____. Site to be structured in such a way as to encourage contributions by limiting the amount of other responses that can be viewed in a session. Contribute a response and get to view some more. Don’t contribute and you’ll have to come back later in order to see any more. Users should register to read more than the first response they see, and register to contribute. Anonymous or named contributions allowed. It’d be great to have age information (including “none specified” for the squeamish) so that people could read responses grouped by age. Teachers at all levels could be encouraged to use it as a resource for teaching poetry, and for a place where their students could have their own “Poetry is ____” list poems published. Site could be seeded with statements about poetry from famous poets.
People Pointing Here