Marginalia free essay sample

The poem, â€Å"Marginalia† is written by Billy Collins, American poet. In his poem â€Å"Marginalia† Collins expressed how notes in the margins share reading experiences with others. He addressed every reader that they must contribute by expressing their views in Margins. He used different expressions, to relate the meaning of Marginalia and its importance for every reader. â€Å"Marginalia is defined as, â€Å"marginal notes or embellishments (as in a book) or â€Å"nonessential items† (merriam-webster. com). In this poem, Billy Collins reflects his thought on the people and their important as they find certain notes in the margins of the book. Poet begins with explaining that how notes in the margin are â€Å"ferocious† and â€Å"skirmish† against the author. By these words, he means that notes in the margins are very irritating, cruel, and argumentative. These notes serve against the author as they directly challenge. Even if the reader is a philosopher like Kierkegaard, or a learned and intellectual man like Conor Cruise OBrien, these marginal notes are a challenge and threat for them, to explain more meanings and logical assumptions to the author. We will write a custom essay sample on Marginalia or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page There is another meaning by these notes in margins, which is to argue and fight against the author and philosophers of the text. In the second stanza of the poem, Billy also provides a contrasting view to enhance the importance of margins and notes. He begins with considering these notes and comments as â€Å"offhand†, â€Å"dismissive† and â€Å"nonsense†, but he soon explained the importance of such notes for the reader. Words are a link and connection between author and reader and reader always find links with the thoughts and circumstances in which the author or poet has written the text or readers have read it. â€Å"I remember once†¦ what the person must look like why wrote Dont be a ninny alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. † (billy-collins. com) In the next stanza, he explained how students use margins. They keep writing notes at the margins of the page and these appear like â€Å"splayed footprints†, which provides the appearance of the footprint on seashore. It gives an idea that someone passed from here. This also provides an idea that how different readers or students, understand and read a text in a number of different ways, and how these notes acts like fans cheering for the thoughts and ideas of the author. Different â€Å"Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points† assist and guide the reader about the text. According to Billy Collin, it is a custom, to write in margins, and if a person has never attempted this, it is the time that he or she should try it. He further adds in his next stanza that these white margins are like our property, and a platform to express our views. It is like a â€Å"parameter† that provides us opportunity to prove that we have not wasted our time or just read the text without understanding. He further gives various examples for the importance of marginalia such as along the borders of the Gospels, reading Joshua Reynolds with Blakes furious scribbling, etc. In his last stanza, he shared his experience that how these marginalia can also connect the reader with another person and the situation, in which the person read the same book. He borrowed a book, â€Å"Catcher in the Rye† from the library, and once when he was feeling lonely, he found a text written in margin â€Å"Pardon the egg salad stains, but Im in love. (billy-collins. com) In conclusion, marginalia have very important connection with the reader, apart from what author meant by the text, these marginal notes provided by different readers assist in understanding the text. Sometimes serve like footprints of old readers, sometimes like fans, Sometime these notes have no connection to the text, but these interesting margins can give enjoyment to the reader by thinking what was the situation in which the book was read previously.