Three Approaches to Poetry

Abstract

In this essay, I reflect on the empirical and subjective foundations of critical readings of poetry. I use my own experience, not because it is more valid than anyone else's but because I have direct access to it. The first section, “The Used-Book-Store Approach,” addresses the formation of poetic canons and the position of the reader as an agent and a consumer. The second section, “The Subway Approach,” gives an example of close reading in a setting where the world within the poem, the world within the reader, and the world outside the reader lose their borders. The third section, “The Rare-Book-Room Approach,” examines the impulse to seek the real thing that poetry can trigger and proposes that the first critical step for the reader consists in assessing the status of the poem as his or her object.