When assigning the value of a piece of literature, what qualifies the literature as considered good literature would be its ability to appeal to the reader on a personal level. What further causes literature to be considered exceptional is how that piece of literature can cause the reader to find hidden meanings in the text to enrich the reader's experience. Looking at Emily Berry's poem, Nothing Sets My Heart Aflame, through reader response criticism, Berry's poetry can be measured as great literature when the reader actively creates meaning in what can be considered a satirical poem that addresses consumerism or as an anonymous shopping confession. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay After first reading the poem, Berry describes a variety of seemingly insignificant objects ranging from Crittall windows to a brown leather bag in a sort of rambling, almost easily distracting fashion with its lack of punctuation except for a lot of commas. What makes the objects in the poem significant is how Berry's tone addresses the items he mentions. After mentioning the objects, the speaker seems distracted and almost wishy-washy as she seems to represent a sense of apathy towards her objects, seeing them as museum artifacts and herself as a curator. One particular section that stands out is how “When the class war broke out, one side was busy buying reclaimed parquet floors / I don't know what the other side was doing.” Looking at that specific line through reader response criticism, there is a strong correlation with social media trends that emphasize mundane occurrences and presumably new popular styles to an extent where those using social media are unaware of more mundane occurrences. serious in the real world. Applying a real word example to the lines of Berry's poem raises hypothetical questions as to whether or not the responses to the poem are meaningful and valid for the piece in question. (Ray 425) Therefore, reader response critics do not analyze the text provided, but rather know “how to produce what can therefore be said to be there.” (Fish 4) Stanley Fish, author of How to Recognize a Poem When You See One, makes the point “interpreters do not decode poems; they make them." In reader response criticism, the reader's response to the text is gradual. A key component in reader response criticism is collaboration between other readers. Other collaborative responses to the same text can enrich the first reader's response, thus bringing the reader closer to the piece of text in question according to Lynn's Texts and Contents: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory in which others saw Nothing Sets My Heart Aflame. As other girls began to relate Berry's poetry to their personal experiences, the more the poem began to be read as the rambling confession of a shopaholic. What further supports the confession it's how the speaker is "taken by the clothes women wear in the magazines/that I read from my physical therapist" while believing in "the power of acquisition to purify the soul" and how owning a brown leather bag would make her become “more politically educated”. (Berry) This is about how many women in my Critical Methods class, myself included, feel like purchasing some piece ofclothing relieved them of a bad mood, but more often than not they experience "buyer's remorse", resulting in them not wearing the item. or pieces of clothing purchased. What made the poem satirical upon reading it a second time was the speaker's attitude about how we are "running out of eras," especially considering some of the objects mentioned: a mid-century lampshade, parquet flooring, a bicycle fixed gear, Crittall windows, a leather bag, a collection of church postcards and an antique brooch. (Berry) Although the objects are seemingly insignificant and typical, there is a real-world application for the object. Many fashions from previous decades have recently returned to the contemporary world under vintage labels. What supports this is the phrase “The old days are very contemporary at the moment”, especially when “we've almost run out of eras”. (Berry) According to section sixteen of Fish's How to Recognize a Poem "any object or event that becomes available within an institutional context... can be characterized." Therefore, the objects mentioned by Berry contain a deeper meaning than those you would normally see in an antique shop. The elements carry with them a sense of object representation, which serves to distract the reader from his or her original train of thought and how such elements represent a "relatively universal" crisis of the original train of thought that "burns" due to a new object. Related to the point made, section eight recalls how the poems “instruct [readers] in ways of looking that will produce what they expect to see.” Berry objects can be depicted. However, they also serve to be easily forgotten, yet the speaker of Berry's poem does not forget them. In the poem's finale, her original train of thought is interrupted when she "sees herself in a Perspex brooch" as she asks for a moment to see modernist church postcards due to her stance on how anything labeled vintage is "become like a lozenge;" something that has become banal and reassuring. Looking deeper into the satirical tone of Berry's poem, the speaker's voice also comes across as dark. As Nothing Sets My Heart Aflame continues, the speaker's voice begins to indicate a level of self- reflection. After stating that the world is “almost out of time,” the speaker states that she doesn't know what to do, suggesting that she should “make some clothes for herself and wear a necklace of cotton spools.” This further validates the speaker who doesn't know what to do, asks if he should go to Berlin.(Berry) Asking whether or not to start a new trend, the speaker begins to think about how to advance the fashion world. However, the sentence could also be read as if the speaker would make fun of the fashion industry and mention how whatever the speaker does will become popular as older styles are recycled and become mainstream without any additional effort According to Lynn's Texts and Contexts, the beauty of criticism in response to the reader is how we can reuse the text we think we already know; however any type of interpretation of the text varies depending on the points of view of other readers. One student in my class read the poem as a confession of being a shopaholic, while another saw the poem as a mockery, but one that deftly addresses consumerism and materialism in contemporary society. Both views, according to section eight of Fish's How to Recognize a Poem, are equally valid because of Fish's statement that "[poems] instruct [students] in ways of looking that will produce what they expect to see.".