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The more I read Whitman, the more I find myself nodding along with a lot of what he has to say, but I also find myself reading and re-reading stanzas just to see if I missed anything and if that would help me in understanding the overall message I am supposed to get from Whitman.  After we discussed interpretation and analysis in class last week, I tried rereading the first poem-this time just reading-without trying to add any of my own interpretation to the poem.  However, I found that this time around, I was having an even more difficult time understanding Whitman because the poem simply became a collection of words without any meaning.  I am having difficulty understanding what it means to appreciate a work of art without interpretation.  I can't see how it is possible to appreciate anything without some type of underlying analysis.  For example, take a song or a piece of music.  We have probably all had the experience of remembering something when we hear a particular song or a piece of music because we associate that song with a particular time in our life.  It is not the songs' lyrics of the music that is being analyzed which allows us to make such an association, but rather simply hearing the song.  It is a subconscious interpretation that invokes a particular feeling when we hear the specific song.  Perhaps then, Sontag meant to warn us against motivated and conscious interpretation as opposed to subconscious and unmotivated interpretation.  I think that in order to appreciate anything, we need to allow for some sort of interpretation.  Otherwise, the poem becomes a collection of words, the painting-a collection of lines and the song-a collection of lyrics and notes.  Although I do agree with Sontag that too much interpretation can cause us to lose the work of art, I also think that I would feel more comfortable if there was a happy medium.  I want to know how to read Whitman-how can I avoid trying to analyze, but still get something out of his poetry?  I know that there is a lot to gain from his poetry and I feel like I'm missing out on something important because I just don't know how to read him.  
Although I think that some kind of interpretation is inevitable and necessary, I also understand what Sontag means when she states that we are almost trained to interpret and analyze to the point where we lose the work of art.  Every time I think of this concept, I think of how it also applies to science.  Against interpretation reminds me of reactions in organic chemistry and the detail with which we need to understand all of these reactions.  We need to know where each electron moves, the charge on each molecule, resonance structures, etc.  However, by the time we have memorized all these details, we end up forgetting what the reaction was supposed to be used for the in the first place! We know where each electron goes, but what was the point of the reaction? There have been countless times when I have been asking myself that on exams. We spend so much time analyzing that we lose sight of the importance of the bigger picture.