Reading for Transformation

This was a very interesting piece of work as Francis X. McAloon believes that there is a spiritual connection with poetry and spirituality. I must say that have not thought of poetry in this way before, as in high school it was a common assignment to descern what the reading meant and interpret the usless poem. One thing that I notice was that he had three different techniques in which he used to read poetry which were talked about in the chapter in the Anthology book. They are: the world of the text, the world behind the text, and the world before the text. This is pretty much the same as what the author said in the Anthology book. I agree with this statement. Also, one thing that i found interesting was his devotional time. When one thinks of devotions, they probably dont think of poetry, or at least I never did. The only poetry read was from the book of Psalms. Its funny how we read the bible, especially books like Psalms and the Songs of Solomon, and we dont even realize that we are reading poetry. Those books are very profound and very poetic. One thing that i am noticing a common trend in Literature and English, is that the text must be engaged. We must have a conversation with the text and i completely agree with that. One thing that i have a difficult time understanding is how the author believes that poetry is so important and it would almost seem that his life is centered around it. I am honestly not sure if it is important or not. I know that i enjoy writing and reading it, but i have never put it on the level of devotional. But one thing that i have noticed is that my appreciation for literature seems to be growing as this class progresses daily.