When you pick up something to read -- a newspaper article, instructions for a new appliance, or a poem, or whatever -- in what order do you read it? For many of us, reading is not a beginning-to-end process but a jumping around in which we survey the scope of what's to be read, look for internal highlights, focus on particular terms, etc. A fascinating exploration of multiple ways of reading a particular poem is a treasure I have found in a blog that I visit often, Poetry and Mathematics by Marian Christie.
Born in Zimbabwe and now living in the UK, mathy poet Marian Christie offers a delightful and informative blog that thoughtfully explores various ways in which the arts of mathematics and poetry are linked. In this January, 2022 blog posting Christie examines what she calls a "multiple choice" poem -- that is a poem that offers multiple ways of reading what the page presents. The poem she considers is one written in 1597 by Henry Lok in honor of Elizabeth I; below I offer a diagram of that poem, copied from Christie's blog.