In the syllabus, one of the learning outcomes pertains to “what we should read, why we should read, and how we should read.” In this post, I will focus in on how we should read. While reading Everett’s poem “Zulus” I found myself trying to make connections between the different stanzas. After the initial reading we did as a group, it almost seemed as though each stanza was its own individual poem. A couple of my group members and I had to remind ourselves that no, this is not a collection of poems, this is simply one larger poem. “Zulus” is a poem that does whatever it wants, yet I instinctively attempted to categorize the stanzas into their own separate (but also connected) entities. I think it’s natural for our brains to want to make sense of things, and one way that I do this is by trying to see how things connect. While it is possible that Everett wrote this poem intending for it to be a grand combination of nonsense, I can’t help but try to understand what it all means. But when it comes to Everett’s work, this is a difficult feat.
In an interview by VQR with Everett the interviewer asked him if he purposefully tried to utilize repetition in his writing and he responded with, “Yeah. I would say I think about it and play with it, but I would never say any work is meant to do it. I have pretty strict rules about interpreting my own mission or my own works. It’s not my place. I’m a writer. I make novels, and then I stand away and let the novel do the work. What I think it means, what I want it to mean, it’s not only useless, but it’s pointless. It doesn’t affect it. It doesn’t matter.” When Everett says this, he is demonstrating that there are multiple ways to interpret something. An author can write something with every intention for it to mean one thing and the reader can interpret it as the opposite. This is an important aspect to how we should read anything. If you go into a reading with the expectation that there’s only one meaning that the author intends for you to understand, then nothing will be gained from reading it. This mindset is too closed—being confined to one meaning is damaging because it prohibits the act of thinkING. Reading and forming various interpretations is a way to get you thinkING, and writing does this too. Just by writing this post I was able to start thinking about things that I normally wouldn’t bother to think about.
When you devote time to thinkING about what something means, it turns into a form of self-reflection. Personally, my interpretations will stem from connections that I make between the text that I’m reading and things that I’m already familiar with. When I put thought into these connections that I intrinsically want to make I am able to recognize the things that I value. For example, when reading “Zulus” the phrase “Somewhere ova the rainbow” stuck out to me, not only because it was used twice, but because it immediately made me think of a scene from The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy sings the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” This movie was one of my favorites as a kid, and while I’m not sure that Everett intended for the reader to think of the movie, I did because it was a prevalent part of my childhood. At the very least, this poem allowed me to recall happy childhood memories. But this is just one small meaning that I have taken away from the poem, there are many more possibilities for interpretation buried within that are waiting to be unveiled.
Just how the reader shouldn’t be expected to only take away one specific meaning, the author should also not have expectations placed on them for their writing. For example, in an interview that was posted on YouTube, Everett mentions an experience in which expectations were placed upon him. He said, “I had written a novel about Dionysus, they’d just turned it down and wanted to know what that had to do with black people. And I thought, ‘wow, I’m relegated to writing about only things that deal with Black people.” It has become rather clear throughout this course that Everett does not appreciate being confined by the expectations of others, and Everett’s dissatisfaction was shown during the interview when he relayed his experience with an almost disappointed tone. This reminds me of an English teacher that I had in high school who was disappointed with how standardized tests change the way we view poetry. During an AP exam, the questions that go along with the provided poems are not free response, they’re multiple choice. This means that the person taking the test is expected to come to a specific interpretation of the poem. If they don’t then they will get the question wrong. My teacher was peeved by this because he was of the belief that a specific interpretation should not be “forcefully beaten out of a poem.” I agree with this, and Everett does as well based on what he said in the interview with VQR. Interpretations should come naturally. Not necessarily easily, but the reader should be able to have the freedom to have their own thoughts and connect those thoughts into a claim (similar to our necklace exercise in class).
There’s no one way to read something—every person will experience something in a different way because none of us are the same (unless you were cloned). This allows each individual to have their own methods of consuming and interpreting a reading. It’s very possible for people to have interpretations that are similar, but each interpretation always has the potential to be explored in a hundred different ways. It’s vital to keep this in mind when approaching a new reading, and to remember that there is no wrong way to read as long as you are actively thinking while doing so.