Creative Reading

No one ever really thinks about the effort it takes to read something. As though consumption is thoughtless and blind. Often, of course, it is. When was the last time any of us paused to consider the culinary feats of a 30-minutes-or-less pizza? But, just as obviously, we all read, we all consume our books, in much more than just mindless reading. 

Think for a minute before continuing to consume this foetal essay — when you are reading something, how does your brain feel? What makes your mind fire? 

For me it’s equal parts plot and sentence-level language. 

Creatively, when I read, I’m looking for word choices and novel ways of describing human emotion. Every page that I can plow through and reap new delights, is every second that I am more motivated to read the next. And this is where the annotating starts, right? Underlining not just things I feel right now, but things I know I will still feel in the future. There are moments, where I’m underlining, and drawing little hearts in the margins, that I know these phrases are more than just momentary. An author as written something so universal, that if I ever write my own book, this quote could be an epigraph, chiseled into my grave, or tattooed on my arm. 

Sometimes there’s a quote i scribe into my journal. Sometimes from that quote I noodle and wheedle and brainstorm and find out my own thoughts on the subject. Some of those turn into original poems or blogs, like this one. I don’t remember the place where I read the phrase “creative reading”, but I know it captured my imagination, and I’ve boiled over it for a couple weeks, and am now starting to form something new out of it. 

It’s fascinating, and I think readers get short shrift. Like people who read regularly are relegated to the same brainless slugs Nancy Regan invented to vilify television and THC. 

And obviously, that is just not a real thing.

Photo of my annotations in an AK Blakemore poetry collection.