Suppose you are reading a book of poetry; it could be the one published anonymously, in 1798, as Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems. You have somehow accepted that the book is worth reading. Do you care about any of the following?
- What is or is not on the title page.
- What is in the Advertisement that precedes the poems themselves.
- What order the poems were printed in.
- What meter or rhyme scheme they have.
- What was happening in the world in the year of publication.
You may care. You should not feel that you ought to care, if you are reading the poems in school.
That is the thesis of this post. I have learned that it may not be accepted.
I would seem to be defending the practice that I learned as an undergraduate at St John’s College. However, most of that defense will come in a later post (namely “Reading and Talking,” preceded by a post on Goethe’s Faust called “Motion and Rest”). I drafted that later post earlier, but then it seemed as if there was a lot more to say, or acknowledge, or recognize. That more is here.
Would you accept a black banana? We learned this year (on Monday, September 22, 2025) that leaving bananas at home for a month need not be a disaster (except for not getting to eat the bananas)
Polytropy 