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Creative Reading: What It Is, How to Do It, and Why
A refreshing approach to reading instruction stressing creativity rather than formal pedagogy and retaining the fresh excitement that reading can bring "before the life gets squeezed out." Poet and teacher Padgett defines "creative reading" and the principal methods of reading instruction in the US, discusses various reading errors and how to capitalize on them, and presents specific methods and exercises involving classic and modern literature, writing, listening, thinking, teaching, and learning. The guide is intentionally cheerful, infused with the poet's love of words...and the music of Spike Jones. Includes illustrations. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
161 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
2 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Ron Padgett
111 books90 followersRon Padgett is a poet and translator whose Collected Poems won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the 2014 Los Angeles Times Prize for the best poetry book. Padgett has translated the poetry of Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, Valery Larbaud, and Blaise Cendrars.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 9, 2010
Thoughts here:
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January 21, 2022
Author is a poet, not a primary teacher in the trenches. Off-topic, in a short book that should be kept in focus, he takes a moment to blast phonics instruction, to disparage other methods, and to say that only whole-language has a chance of producing readers. He also reminds us, unnecessarily and as a straw-man, that the worries of American students compared to other nations' students, using comparative words as vague as 'better' and 'weaker' are unanswerable.
The other problem is that this is dated. He says that adults don't read enough and write less. Another straw man. What am I doing right now but writing? What are comment threads on social media made up of, if not reading and writing? Also (later) he does not have a clue that digital and audiobooks will become portable and convenient, but he does pre-emptively think that digital books would be horrid.
That said, he writes engagingly, and I do have hopes that when he finally gets the stage set I'll learn something from his ideas.
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p. 56 finally begins the Tips. Most involve butchering text to create random resonances. Read a newspaper cross-column, read only every other line, or every other line backwards, etc. The one idea I do like is to take a bit of poetry that I'm struggling with, and replace every noun (or verb) with a different random one, thus decoding the structure first. "The forest and the trees are separated." Then put the intended words back in. (And, of course, always read poetry [except concrete poetry] aloud.)
And read at least portions of other works aloud to yourself. Slow down to that speed if a passage is beautiful, or difficult, or worth thinking about. I agree with him about that.
I like his definition of classics. They "were created by people who looked at life squarely and had something wise or beautiful to say about it, with freshness and originality."
I like the idea of the French leaflet, 10 sonnets cut line by line so that they can be paged through in "One Hundred Trillion Poems" like the little board books that allow a child to put a giraffe head on a monkey's body with a fish's tail. Raymond Queneau had to construct those very carefully. I'm not sure how creative the reader is though.
I appreciate how he reads a book of poetry - I do much the same often. First, last, the shorter ones, the rest of 'em if warranted, and then the whole thing straight through if worthy.
"Why don't we... read according to what we need? Have you been feeling trivial? Read some philosophy. Have you been stuck in the same town too long? Read about an exotic place. Has your imagination been running riot? Read a good how-to book on plumbing. Does your life seem too cut and dried? Go to the library, close your eyes, reach out and take a book, check it out, go home, and read every word of it. These are all creative uses of reading."
I do like the idea of reading by location, but I don't like his examples, so I'll paraphrase. Reading Walden on a nature hike or in a wilderness cabin is a good fit... but what would it be like to read Elmore Leonard or The Old Man and the Sea there? Or what would it be like to read this book on the beach? Experiment creatively!
"By going into some detail here about typefaces and book design, I am not suggesting that we all need to become experts on the subject. I do believe, though, that we will become better readers if we are more aware of the circumstances--sometimes the constraints--under which we read. Otherwise, in having trouble reading a poorly designed book, we may blame ourselves or the author for shortcomings that instead are the publisher's.
The other problem is that this is dated. He says that adults don't read enough and write less. Another straw man. What am I doing right now but writing? What are comment threads on social media made up of, if not reading and writing? Also (later) he does not have a clue that digital and audiobooks will become portable and convenient, but he does pre-emptively think that digital books would be horrid.
That said, he writes engagingly, and I do have hopes that when he finally gets the stage set I'll learn something from his ideas.
---
p. 56 finally begins the Tips. Most involve butchering text to create random resonances. Read a newspaper cross-column, read only every other line, or every other line backwards, etc. The one idea I do like is to take a bit of poetry that I'm struggling with, and replace every noun (or verb) with a different random one, thus decoding the structure first. "The forest and the trees are separated." Then put the intended words back in. (And, of course, always read poetry [except concrete poetry] aloud.)
And read at least portions of other works aloud to yourself. Slow down to that speed if a passage is beautiful, or difficult, or worth thinking about. I agree with him about that.
I like his definition of classics. They "were created by people who looked at life squarely and had something wise or beautiful to say about it, with freshness and originality."
I like the idea of the French leaflet, 10 sonnets cut line by line so that they can be paged through in "One Hundred Trillion Poems" like the little board books that allow a child to put a giraffe head on a monkey's body with a fish's tail. Raymond Queneau had to construct those very carefully. I'm not sure how creative the reader is though.
I appreciate how he reads a book of poetry - I do much the same often. First, last, the shorter ones, the rest of 'em if warranted, and then the whole thing straight through if worthy.
"Why don't we... read according to what we need? Have you been feeling trivial? Read some philosophy. Have you been stuck in the same town too long? Read about an exotic place. Has your imagination been running riot? Read a good how-to book on plumbing. Does your life seem too cut and dried? Go to the library, close your eyes, reach out and take a book, check it out, go home, and read every word of it. These are all creative uses of reading."
I do like the idea of reading by location, but I don't like his examples, so I'll paraphrase. Reading Walden on a nature hike or in a wilderness cabin is a good fit... but what would it be like to read Elmore Leonard or The Old Man and the Sea there? Or what would it be like to read this book on the beach? Experiment creatively!
"By going into some detail here about typefaces and book design, I am not suggesting that we all need to become experts on the subject. I do believe, though, that we will become better readers if we are more aware of the circumstances--sometimes the constraints--under which we read. Otherwise, in having trouble reading a poorly designed book, we may blame ourselves or the author for shortcomings that instead are the publisher's.
Want to read
June 22, 2009Highly recommended to me by very experienced teachers--So I feel confident recommending it without reading. Have not yet had time to read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews