Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

Close Reading to Doing the One-­‐Two writing/teaching
From: Peter Quartermain
Subject: Close Reading
Can someone please tell me exactly why the "close reading" of texts is such a
reprehensible practice? I notice it came up in an oblique sort of way in the
Silliman Fan Club brouhaha, and I’m probably showing my complete and utter
ignorance and stupidity. On 2 March Ron said that "I’ve been trashed for close
reading before (by Don Byrd among others), as if the practice itself were
politically incorrect (rather than the uses to which it once was put a full
generation ago)." However one reads Silliman’s prose I would not think he’s
instructing his reader how a text ought to be read, but recording how he himself
reads it (and what he thinks &c &c) on one particular occasion in a particular
context.
I’d assume that the opposite of a "close" reading is not so much a "distant" one
as a "vague" or "inattentive" one (though I’m not at all sure exactly what those
words mean in this context). Is there a point at which a "vague" reading gets to
be reprehensible, or preferable? (And so on.)
This is not a facetious question. I like reading, and I’m really interested in the
sorts of strategic decisions people actually make when they read; I’m interested
in how they read (I’m not all that sure how I read, either, come to that, and if I
have a method at all it sure changes a lot, day to day, book to book, poem to
poem). I’d have thought "close reading" would be less rather than more
reprehensible, so I ask the question in all seriousness.