Author Description

“Many of us were taught poetry as a rote resource: we had to repeat over and over again the verses of one major poet or another to recite them the next day. It was a mechanical process in which the meaning of the poem or the author’s intention was neither digested nor deepened: the focus was on the counting of syllables, the literary figures, the use of synalephas and the classification in one of those endless metrical stanzas with their verses of major or minor art, consonant and assonant rhyme. “Rather than an autonomous, spontaneous and enriching learning, it seemed to be an abstract and pretended system, typical of educational laws that have turned our students into passive subjects: instead of exploring the field of poetry, we often resorted to a set of techniques that do not generate any effect on the majority of schoolchildren. Once I began my studies at the university, there was time to consider a broad reflection that I am going to expose throughout this book.” — from the Introduction