On Friday we had peer revisions on our evaluative essays.
What really makes a poem good?
Well my group had contradicting statements
regarding interpretation. Interpretation can be viewed as a good
or bad thing. For example, the poem I chose to write
about was Thomas Traherne’s “Wonder.” So at
the last line it ends with “When I was born.” This
raises many questions and thoughts regarding the
entire poem. Because this poem can be interpreted
in many ways, its intended audience is increased,
thus providing readers with many different perspectives
in interpreting the poem. For example, the last line could
mean a lot of things. It can be related to a spiritual
uplifting or even death. But I believe that poems that
can relate to a large audience have the potential to be good.
Even if I believe interpretations are a good thing,
there many others who disagree with me ;)
Others believe that interpretation can lead a poem to
be too complex for the reader to analyze and become
frustrated. For example, Dickinson’s poems are fairly
simple and clear-to-the-point (death, sadness, dying,
morbidity, you get the point). This allows the reader to have
a clear understanding of the poem and firmly grasp the
underlying meaning. Too much interpretation can result
in confusion and ultimately have a negative experience
on a reader. If the reader has the meaning of the poem
down, he/she can continue analyzing other important
factors of the poem, such as structure and sound patterns.
Maybe AP English time writes have something to do with
this negativity toward interpretation. Don’t get me wrong,
I love to interpret poems; however, only having a certain
amount of time to write an essay about a poem kind of
makes you wish interpretation was clear-cut subject.
However, interpretation can lead into thought provoking
discussions that apply to almost everyone.
Traherne wanted everyone to enjoy his poems by making
this poem “interpret friendly.” The more we interpret,
the more we can get out of a poem. Take The Wasteland.
I know for a fact that with one read the whole meaning
of the poem is not obtained. With frequent discussions
in class we are able to break down the complexity of
the daunting poem and have a chance to understand the meaning of the poem.
In high school, interpretation was just a way to avoid answering concrete answers about the poem and get away with not reading the assigned material. But now as a professional college student, I believe that interpretation is a way to open new doors and grasp new perspectives of meaningful poems.
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1 comment:
I remember discussing this issue during our peer revisions too.
I actually wrote about Thomas Traherne’s “Wonder” too and coincidentally decided that having a poem with many potential interpretations as a good quality each poem should have. I do also agree that with many interpretations come a larger range or audience. However, after hearing about other criteria on good poetry, specifically one that has just one meaning, I felt that there are substantial reasons for that preference too.
Take for instance T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land.” It was perhaps the most frustrating reading I’ve ever done, at least until Marianne Moore’s, “The Octopus.” : ) Well, “The Waste Land” didn’t seem to simply elicit one meaning. The class discussion following that reading revealed that everyone had a different interpretation, some related while many were unconnected with each other. In the case, of T.S. Eliot, a more simplified and direct meaning would have been less frustrating.
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