Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [29]
This is a rather melancholy poem in which, perhaps, the speaker is mourning the passing, the “putting out” of the passion of youth (“burning”). In the poem’s more obvious binary—the opposition of childhood games to more “adult” ones—the same melancholy plays itself out, making the poem’s refrain-like repetition of “how far I’ve come” ring with unhappy irony. The little blonde girl is an image of the speaker’s own past self (since the poem talks about reminiscing), and the speaker mourns that little girl’s (her own) passing into a more uncertain and less carefree state. It is 4:00 A.M. in Brooklyn Heights—just about the end of night, the darkest point perhaps before the beginning of morning. But windows are open, suggesting possibility, so things are not all bad. The friends make noise together, break bottles together, revisit hopscotch square 5 together, and contemplate moving on.
Why Do The Method?
It does take some getting used to, working with The Method. It fragments everything; it can appear as if you are ignoring the usual cues by which you make sense of things, such as reading consecutively, from a to b to c, rather than looking for and tabulating all of the a’s, all of the b’s and so forth. And why read for pattern in the first place? Two answers are:
The Method can help you to control in condensed form a wealth of information. The organizational grids will bring out the features of the subject that are most important, what the reading or image is most concerned with (which repeats), and what it is concerned or worried about (what is opposed to what).
The Method can spur you to discover things to say about whatever you are analyzing. In the normal process of observing, and especially of reading, we are often not attending to what repeats or contrasts. We’re just taking in the information—not doing anything with it. But when you do things with information, that promotes thinking; it makes you an active learner.
* * *
Try This 2.3: Experiment in a Group Setting with The Method—Use a Visual Image by Adrian Tomine
Often, it will seem strange at first to read or analyze in the somewhat mechanical form that The Method prescribes, so it makes sense to work collaboratively at first, in small groups or with everyone in the class, to collect the data. Appoint one group member as scribe. Keep each other on task—do each step discretely. As with Notice and Focus, prolong the observation phase and refrain from judgments and big claims, at least until you begin writing about what is important (step 4).
Try an image by Adrian Tomine—a frequent contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a graphic novelist. Just use Google Images for “New Yorker covers + Tomine” to obtain a range of possibilities. We suggest his August 24, 2009 cover, “Double Feature”—an image of a crowd at dusk beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Then, for homework, repeat the exercise alone, using a second Tomine cover—we suggest the November 8, 2004 cover, “Missed Connection,” featuring a man and a woman looking at each other from passing subway cars.
* * *
* * *
Try This 2.4: Apply The Method to Arts & Letters Daily
Select any article from our favorite website, Arts & Letters Daily (aldaily.com), and do The Method on it. You can actually apply The Method to anything you are reading, especially a piece you wish to understand better. You can use the front page of the newspaper, a speech from the American Rhetoric website, perhaps a series of editorials on the same subject, an essay, one or more poems by the same author (because The Method is useful for reading across texts for common denominators), and so on. You can work with as little as a few paragraphs or as much as an entire article or chapter or book. The key is to practice the procedure