The Cambridge guide to reading poetry / Andrew Hodgson.

Includes index.

"In an episode of the British sitcom Peep Show, the hapless layabout Jez sits with a copy of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, which he has acquired in a bid to impress a woman. Struggling over the novel's opening pages, he turns to his flatmate Mark and asks in a puzzled and fragile voice, 'How do you read?' It is a comically simple question for a man in his thirties to ask, but it is also a good one. I think the answer has two parts. The first is to allow a poem to absorb our attention - to cut out distraction and concentrate on the aesthetic, emotional, and conceptual experience that the words afford. Jez struggles with this because he has the television on in the background ('everything bad begins with "turn the telly off" ... '), and we will struggle, too, the more distractions we have to hand. Find a quiet, comfortable space, exercise patience, and we will soon find ourselves grateful to immerse ourselves in contemplation of the words on the page. The second part, which a book such as this can do more to help with, involves reflecting on the experience of reading in ways that refine and deepen our appreciation of it. And that process of reflection might itself be divided up. First, it involves establishing accurately and in detail what is there on the page in front of us; it is an act of description"-- Provided by publisher.