Experiencing Impressions (Step 3) | Close Reading Poetry for Beginners

well welcome everyone to the lecture on experiencing poetry video I'm going to talk about what must be learned and what cannot be taught and that is experiencing poetry this is tricky because in the previous lecture we looked at observing words so we're looking at the poem how it works on the page what it's doing with words and language figuratively schematically through its diction however in this lecture we're going to be doing the opposite of that we're going to be looking at not just the poem but how the poem is being received by us how we are experiencing the poem so close reading doesn't just involve close attention to language but it also requires a perception of understanding how we are reacting and responding to the poem and I'm going to talk about some ways to do that it's very difficult to systematize this kind of approach in talking about experiencing poetry because it's all different for everyone and I'm reminded of Walt Whitman's stanza 2 of Song of Myself have you reckoned a thousand acres much have you practiced so long to learn to read have you felt so proud to get it the meaning of poems stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems you shall no longer take things second or third hand this idea gets at the main idea behind this lecture that you really have to experience you cannot take somebody else's a literary critic or a summary or someone else's summary of the poem as the experience of the poem itself you really have to enter into it in this entry into it involves a surrender of the imagination now I want to talk about this experience in terms of impressions Samuel Johnson and his lives of the English poets mentions Impressions a lot impressions are left behind by the poem on the imagination on the memory on the Consciousness they are What Remain with us after we read the poem and I think that there are three main kinds of impressions that we're going to be looking at in this video the first are the sensual that is the appeal to the senses in poetry through imagery or through metaphor or through sound then you have the emotional experience that is the tone of the poem the mood of the poem ...