Reader Response Theory in a Poem by Jack Gilbert

Subject: Reader Response Theory in a Poem by Jack Gilbert
From: Will Hochman (hochman@southernct.edu)
Date: Sun Apr 21 2002 - 12:34:49 EDT

>
Tear It Down
>by Jack Gilbert
>
>We find out the heart only by dismantling what
>the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
>we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
>We can break through marriage into marriage.
>By insisting on love we spoil it,
>get beyond affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
>We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
>But going back toward childhood will not help.
>The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
>Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
>Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
>of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
>of the garbage tub is more than the stir
>of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
>enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
>We should insist while there is still time. We must
>eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
>in our bed to read the body within that body.

*****

>
>
> 

-- 
	Will Hochman

Associate Professor of English
Southern Connecticut State University
501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515
203 392 5024

http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/willz.html

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