The Poem as Event-Chapter 2-Rosenblatt

The Poem as Event

Wow!  That was pretty darn deep.  Basically, what is understand thus far is the reading is a process or a relationship between the text and the reader.  They are not separate entities a such.  They go together as in a similar vain between and speaker and listener.  The speaker speaks to the listeners in a linguistic way and many cultural linguistic norms are shared.  There is an interaction.  One speaks and the other listens to the gestures, tone, dictation-type ways the speaker would like to be understood or not.  The listener brings their linguistic background and other experiences and there is an interaction or intercambio of sorts.  The reader interacts with the text, which was written by the author.  The author being the speaker, is thus gone but the words, tone and dictation are left for the reader to take in and thus an interaction takes place.  The poem is the interaction of the text with the reader in real time.  I think that is what I have synthesized so far.  I liked this quote and I will add it before I forget.  This is thus a part of my transactional experience, my interchange, if you will, my process, if you like.  "This necessary co-operation between writer and reader, the one to suggest, the other to make concrete, is a privilege of the verbal form."-From John Fowles..(page 14)
Another quote I love is this: The text, we have seen, patterns and delimits, but it ultimately functions like a chemical element: it itself is merged in the synthesis with the other elements to produce a particular event-a poem, novel, a play.(page 15) Rosenblatt

Yet we must remember that once the creative activity of the author has ended, what remains for others--for even the author himself--is a text.  To again bring a poem into being requires a reader, if only the author himself. (page 15) Rosenblatt
That is so true.  I know many people want to teacher reading and writing apart from themselves.  This would be akin to taking the poem without the reader or the text.  It is a total process and an interaction.  One cannot exist without the other.  This brings to mind the need for revision in writing but also revision in the mind for the reader to consider as they both co-construct meaning together.  Just a thought.  I loved this chapter.  So deep and yet I think I am understanding it more and more.