Birkerts Quotation Sandwhich!!!!!!1

Writing is a conversation, and in order to add to the conversation we need to set up the general discussion and then add our own views and perspectives to the subject. In his essay, The Owl has Flown, Birkert maintains that "Awed and intimidated by the availability of texts, faced with the all but impossible task of discriminating among them, the reader tends to move across surfaces, skimming, hastening from one site to the next without allowing the words to resonate inwardly." In other words, Birkert is saying that we just quickly skim what we read and move on without taking the time to actually ponder and engage with what the writer is actually trying to say. If we don't take the time to actually understand a reading then we won't be able to effectively set up the general discussion, and if we just skim along moving from one text to the next we won't effectively come up with our own opinions and perspectives to add to the discussion. In order to be able to write conversationally we need to fully analyze a text otherwise we won't be able to put in our own "oar" to the discussion as properly as we should.