Marjorie Perloff
Wielogłos, Issue 1 (9) 2011: Świadomość krytyki, 2011, pp. 113 - 135
https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.11.001.0319The authoress of the article observes a crisis of the ability of close reading in the American university practice as well as in art criticism; the crisis is caused – she tries to convince us – by the too quick and rapid cultural change in humanistic studies. Above all, she suggests a return to the practice of close reading, however not on the principle of new criticism, but with a modifying difference (here there emerges the category of reading closely). In the successive parts of her paper, Marjorie Perloff ponders on the possible modes of reading „the highly nondescript contemporary poetry” and suggests that it should be subjected to „purposefully indefinite and loose manner of reading” (at this point there emerges the concept of reading differentially). It turns out that the art of interpretation – reflection on the modes of reading contemporary poetry is accompanied by an analysis of a number of concrete poems (among others by William Carlos Williams, Tom Raworth, Susan Howe) – is above all a study of the „structure of changes” of the contemporary poem, a study oriented at a skillful way of posing questions regarding poems, rather than furnishing answers and coming up with ready-made interpretations.