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Originally Posted by Rick Mullin
My problem with the article is similar to my problem with the plaques next to paintings at museums. To most readers of the Times (millions of non-poetry readers) it assigns meaning to the poem and instructs on how to read it. Fmeh. And as a former journalist, I despise the online interactive machinations, which characterize the demise of all things written and otherwise civilized. Yuck.
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Rick, This is hard for me to swallow. You’ve shaken my faith in museum plaques that describe what the observer is looking at! Plaques provide the basic facts and are helpful to the average museum goer like myself. I rely on them. They hardly begin to tell the whole story, but do give something of an orientation. Btw, those plaques that accompany works of art in museums are a form of journalism in their own right. They aren’t simply dashed off without going through rigorous editing. Museum curators are increasingly looking outward for people to write those plaques with knowledge of the art being depicted
When I was at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and found myself lost and exhausted in the maze of exhibit rooms (my wife and I always split up when we go to museums and compare notes afterward) A man came over to me and asked if I would like to know what I was looking at. I typically would have politely declined, but I didn’t this time. (I remember I was in the room where the Matisse’s
Dancers hangs). He breezily led me through the endless hallways, alcoves, wings and rooms I would have otherwise missed and told me what I was looking at. His narration animated the art I was looking at. I had no reason not to believe him. I have only a relatively rudimental knowledge of art, like most people, but also have a ferocious curiosity to encounter other people’s perspectives. He was generous with his time and in many ways still populates my memories of what is the most beautiful museum I’ve ever witnessed. Before he left, he suggested I go to the ballet at the Hermitage Theater that evening to see
Swan Lake. We did exactly that and I had one of the most profound experiences in my life. (It had to do with our serendipitous seating at the railing hanging over the orchestra pit and with the timpani drummer therein. I wrote a children’s story about it.) I felt the music and movement coalesce on the stage and leave me dumbfounded. It was quite a day.
But this article is not plaque-like. It is a bonafide analysis of the poem — aided by technology — not unlike the many lectures I attended by W.A. Hughes in Brit Lit when I attended college. Like good educators are driven to do, he imparted a thirst for learning in me that had escaped me up until that point. He gave me way to grow my imagination. Is what he told the class about Byron’s hubris, Milton’s intellect, Coleridge’s opium-filled dreams all there is to know? No. In fact, he himself would often theatrically, dramatically, step inside a pair of large parentheses he would draw on either side of him with his arms and say something like,
“But here’s what I think” and by saying that gave me permission to say the same thing.
That man in the Hermitage, that Brit Lit professor I once had, this NYT journalist, are all important to me. Is this journalist’s analysis of the poem plaque-like? I don’t think so. What the online interactive machinations provide the journalist/educator is a tool to use, much like the chalkboard, the overhead projector, the powerpoint presentation were/are used to enlighten.
My guess is that a larger proportion of NYT readers read poetry than that of the general population. There were 273 comments on the article.
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