How to do thing to poems

 For my intro to lit course I have decided to do something along the lines of my “how to do things to poems” concept. (With poems standing in for works of literature generally.) The first thing people think of doing to a poem is analyzing it, but that activity is without any explicit purpose, becoming a game of scansion and trope hunting, and resulting in the “nervous helplessness” many literature professor themselves feel with poetry (when they are specialists in other genre and don’t think about the lyric at all). (The phrase was coined by Geoffrey Pullum.) Other things to do to a poem: illustrate, musicalize, translate, memorize, adapt, parody, forget.