Anyway, if I am going to blog about poetry, sometimes the discussion has to get a little bit technical. My hope is that I can find a comfortable medium between reading like a pompous, tenured professor writing a peer reviewed article on garden images in Milton’s Paradise Lost and a pony-tailed mushroom-eater spouting about the inner cosmic self and the transcendence of Jim Morrison’s poetry. No offense intended to any particular persons in my description there. I am simply describing two stereotypes. If you see yourself as one or the other and you are offended that you can be described in that way, it may be time to work on unstereotyping yourself.
Moving on…
A student asked me a question the other day that I have been asked as a teacher and a poet for many years and probably close to a thousand times. What can I do to learn how to interpret poetry? My answer may seem strange to some, but it is quite simple and emphatic.
Unless you are intending to perform the poem as a recitation, dramatic reading, or a performance, or you are intending to mimic, copy, or parody it in an artistic work of your own, there is no need to interpret poetry at all.
What? Isn’t that what reading poetry is all about? Interpreting the symbols and language and such?
Nope, not even close!
To interpret means to provide or give meaning to information based on one’s beliefs, opinions, or circumstances or to represent ideas through art or other performance. A poem already has its meaning provided by the words that the poet chose to use to describe the ideas and actions that are in the poem. It has no need to be further interpreted unless, of course, you are going to give a performance of it. If poems need to be interpreted for them to affect us emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually, then the art of poetry is purely subjective, and, as with anything that is purely subjective, the art itself is without any measurable value, and it exceeds the bounds of all tastes so that it can only be described as flavorless, vulgar, and bland. Perhaps, I have just explained the current state of published postmodern poetry. I mean no offense to any particular poet or reader.
Poetry must be read for the pure enjoyment of it. Its language, meaning, context, sound and even its shape upon the page or screen must excite a reader emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually. Poetry is agitating. It makes our thoughts and emotions move. At its best, poetry shifts the very way in which we think and feel. If you read a poem or have it read to you and you are not stimulated enough by it to want to read it or hear it again immediately, or you are not possessed by it to put it aside, think about it, and return to it later, please do yourself and poetry a favor and move on to another poem.
Why have you not heard this before? Well, academic schools and their studies of poetry force fledgling and experienced scholars alike to read all of the anthologized poetry of certain authors or certain historical periods until they are convinced that the good poems must be read side-by-side with the bad for the benefit of people, poetry, and scholarship everywhere. Then, these scholars go out into the world and subject others to the torture to which they themselves were subjected, and they are not bad people, but they are bad teachers of poetry. They were never inspired to teach others how to tell the bad from the good. They were told that it is all good, and they continue to propagate that false understanding.
I am not one of those scholars though I am a scholar. I am teacher, but I never learned that I am not capable of discriminating between a poem that is good and a poem that is bad simply because it is in a published anthology. Here is what I know. Any reader seeking a genuine and meaningful relationship with poetry should be guided by his or her own feelings and thoughts about it and read only those poems in which she or he delights. When reading a poem, if nothing moves, put the poem aside and go on to the next one. If you come back to that poem later, there is your proof.
But, my imaginary critic says, is this very action not being subjective?
No, it is not. I have suggested a standard, a measurement, a bar, a magnitude, a quantifiable requirement. A poem must stir a person emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually, or it is not good. Any person who is self-aware will return to a good poem. That is the right answer to the right question.
And I am at my word limit for this blog. What do you think about this approach to poetry or a poem? Perhaps, you would like to develop a greater appreciation for poetry that would inspire you to be moved by it. That I can do. Other true teachers can do so as well. As far as interpreting…Oh, my! I suppose that I will leave that to people far less qualified.
By the way, the picture with this blog is one that I took this morning. It is morning glories that have joined the wisteria in growing over our patio. Pretty cool, huh?
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