Tom:
You've chosen a wonderful poem for discussion. I like this approach, a careful talking-through. If it were up to me I'd linger more on the ways the words send fissures off in unexpected directions, but that's simply a slight shift of focus. I find that working through a poem this way greatly increases my appreciation; it can also make me realize anew how much of a great poem resists paraphrase. That's why there's vastly more written about Shakespeare than Shakespeare himself ever wrote.
RPW
|