Weekly Response 9/3

1a)       “Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important…” (Shklovsky 16).

1b)       “Confusion, like energy, is neither created nor destroyed.  It never vanishes.  It merely changes forms” (Andrews 28).

2)         How does theoretical analysis of literature cause objects or ideas to be “unfamiliar”?

3)         As being fairly new to the complex nature of “literary theory”, the idea of formalism can be a hard topic to fully comprehend.  When analyzing a text, it is easy to fall back on mundane explanations, such as the author’s motives or the period when the text was written.  These narrow perspectives allow only a very limited view on what the text really means.  Shklovsky describes how “art” can make common objects that are well known to become something “unfamiliar”.  How we perceive art depends on how open we are to “unfamiliarity”. 

            The quote I selected from the Dear Professor poems deals with the comparison of “confusion” and “energy”.  One can perceive that these poems deal with (somewhat) common classroom problems from a student’s perspective.  As a college student, I can easily relate to the “object” of these poems, yet my understanding of the “artfulness” of the object is where the confusion sets in.  After re-reading the poems, I tried searching for the “unfamiliarity” of these poems, or as I saw it, a “double meaning”.  As I analyzed the text further, I moved away from this “double meaning” search and considered how my confusion of the “artfulness” of these poems was affecting my ability to fully understand them.  I then realized that these poems have much more complex meaning than just a student’s troubles; it explains the troubles of everyone.  The poems deal with the “unfamiliarity” of life’s problems, such as gender differences, communication, and “proof”.  As I saw these poems in this context, my confusion shifted over to certain poems and what the “unfamiliarity” was for them.  I learned that “confusion” will always be by your side when you are analyzing a text.  Yet, confusion is not a bad quality; it keeps us searching for the “unfamiliarity” that art throws upon us.