Seeing the Question

Two Toilet Stories VS.

“Fix a man’s toilet and he flushes for a few years, teach a man how to fix his toilet and he flushes forever.”

Three Kinds of Questions to Ask 1. Literal Factual Questions (don’t dismiss the importance of asking these questions to yourself) 2. Analytical Questions – these questions require you to do something in your mind with the text: break it down, reassemble it, put it next to other similar kinds of work, etc. 3. Personal Questions – these questions get you to consider how your subject connects or relates to your life.

Some Examples, please? What kind of literary element is being used when Laux writes “He flutters like the pages of a dirty book”? Given that none of the other poems, including “Cher,” use parentheses what is the significance of the parentheses used in the title “Mick Jagger (World Tour 2008)”? Why might Laux include this piece of information? Who is someone for me who seems both really alive and also on the border of old age and death? What does the word “rugose” mean? Laux explicitly compares Jagger to three animals - bovine, puma, and monarch – in that order. What might Laux be suggesting with that ordering? What is meant by he is pumping his victory fist like he’s “flushing a chain toilet”?

Artistic Vision