Garner, Dwight (b. 1965)

The Reader as Artist, Intuitively Plumbing a Psychic Well: 'What We See When We Read,' by Peter Mendelsund [from the New York Times]

July 31, 2014

"It summons a mental flood."

"What We See When We Read" is the sort of epistemological exercise that, at its best, calls all sorts of associations to mind. It summons a mental flood. The words it conjured for me were Wallace Stevens's, from "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," his indelible poem about perspectives. Stevens wrote:

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Liquid::Flood

Reading

Dwight Garner, "The Reader as Artist, Intuitively Plumbing a Psychic Well: 'What We See When We Read,' by Peter Mendelsund," The New York Times (July 31, 2014). <Link to NYTimes.com>

03/02/2017