A Family’s Saturday Morning (Reader-response Criticism)
8:00 AM
lots of chores posted on the fridge
the dishes stacked on the sink
the tiles in the bathroom are stinking
dusty cabinet tops and windows
and the duster’s misplaced
the curtains are unchanged
everything’s topsy-turvy in the living room
starving pet dogs howl outside
dried leaves scattered on the ground
the plants in their pots are not yet watered.
8:05 AM
just rose from the bed
a breakfast waits on the table.
the t.v.’s available
no one’s around.
it’s time for morning cartoons
but the remote’s nowhere to be found.
a glass of juice is in the fridge
and ice cream is waiting in the freezer.
everything is a mess.
mom’s out to nowhere
and Dad has gone working
my sister’s inside her room
11:00 AM
it was hot at the market
the ukay-ukay was interesting
new shirts for my son
and a set of blouse for my daughter
the vegetables are not fresh anymore
the fish stinks and water drips on the floor
the pots not boiling yet
the clothes line’s empty
some clothes are yet to be hanged
could not work because of a head ache
but everyone’s still asleep at eight
so then went to the market alone
11:35 AM
have to come back to work at 12
the rice’s still hot
and the soup’s not so tasty
no time to nap
work’s waiting to be done
tired hands and feet
my wife’s sleeping
must have slept her head ache again
today’s salary day
everything’s in order
have to reward my son and daughter
Oopps! have to go now
°ooOoo°
This poem needs an implied reader to understand it. What I mean here is the ‘implied reader’ that the reader-response critics mean as they define it as someone who is established by the “response-inviting structures” of the text. I assumed that this type of reader would be created to anybody who would try to understand my poem. But if ever, I had not succeeded, let me explain my poem more to you.
The focus here is on the reader himself. So I made a poem where they no longer can have time to think about the author because they would think more for what is happening in the poem. I would like to force the reader to fill the gaps in this work since that task lies on them in that way, the text would guide them or constrain them. Spoon feeding is a no-no in this criticism. And notice that the first person pronoun ‘I’ was never used. It is so, so that any reader could fill this gap with imagining their selves in the poem as they relate their own experiences to it.
Since this is an explanation and not the poem, I’ll elaborate the poem. Subjective interpretation is not a crime against reader-response criticism, so assume whatever you want.
But let me clear things out here. There are four characters speaking in the poem, where their minds are being spoken out randomly and with no punctuations, which I guess is how most people think. 8:00 AM, the daughter or the older sibling woke up, noticed the lots of chores in the house and eventually came back to her room. 8:05 AM, the son, the other sibling, woke up, ate breakfast, and watched t.v. 11:00 AM, the mother came back from the market, did the things she had to do, most importantly, his husband’s lunch. She had a head ache earlier but she had to go to the market, forgot about it when she became interested with the ukay-ukay and bought clothes for her children. 11:45 AM, the father came back from work, a 15-minute break, ate lunch immediately, he had no time to think of anything but noticed the good work of his children. Nothing was said from 8:05 AM to 11:00 AM, we can assume that the two siblings did the chores at this time since the father noticed order in their house. Everything’s connected in the poem actually, just read closely to it as a reader who has the role to fill the gaps.
And that’s reader-response criticism for you readers. I believe, as the reader-response critics also believe, that literature should be treated as coexisting with experience. So, in every reading of literature, read with your eyes wide open to fill the missing pieces through the help of your experiences and preoccupations as you read. They are all in you mind.
