How Far is too Far....

I also take Dr. Sexon's Biblical Foundations for those of you who do not already know and I am beginning to see how much they parallel one another. It is crazy because I just got done reading a chapter in my Northrop Frye book talking about reading things literally. He states that, 'The only time you can take the word 'literal' seriously is when you read something in the same way that you read a poem, where you accept every word that is given to you without question but do not make any premature association between every word and something in the world outside. That is, your whole attention is directed toward putting the words together.

I guess part of me agrees with him that you can't take the term literal very seriously, but part of me is a little confused and thinks that he is contradicting. When I was reading some of the Wallace Stevens poem in the anthology, I looked up almost every word. I took every word out of context to try and find some specific meaning that i thought that I was over looking, but is Frye saying that we should not look that far into something to find the meaning. I have mentioned this idea on my blog before, but this caught my eye and I thought it could be something interesting to talk about.

I had the understanding that poets were to look into things, that is how good poetry is written. OR is it? Is good poetry the stuff that we can physically see written, without having to grab a dictionary to find out what is the REAL meaning? I hope that people read this passage and clear me up, because I am not sure how far we need to read into things to find the real idea....

I wanted to comment on Marilyn's blog....I think that she does an exceptional job of keeping track with the notes as well as some of her own ideas in class. We were told to pick out a blog for the 211 class that I am in, and I thought that I would do the same for this class. Good job Marilyn! Keep it up, and I'll keep readin'......