As I was revising my essay, I had, as I'm sure many of you have had as well, a strong urge to analyze and interpret something I had stumbled upon. It is ironic in a way that we are meant to write an expository essay and pick apart poems without interpreting, when the very act of meticulously scanning and looking for patterns and connections leads our minds to unconsciously interpret these different facts and pieces and, invariably, come to conclusions or judgments based on this analysis.
As I was looking over "The Windhover", I noted how peculiarly the first stanza was constructed. The apparent symmetry was similar to his other works, but this particular one stood out even more. As I was describing it in my essay, it kind of hit me: the stanza looks like it's divided in the shape of two sideways V's, similar to how "PIED Beauty" was divided into stairs. Well, that wasn't too exciting, until a second later it hit me that rightside up V's are like birds flying, and it just so happens that "The Windhover" describes a bird flying! Oh, you have no idea how much I wanted to include that in my paper. An urge to analyze, I would have never thought.
Now, I'm sure there are multiple other reasons as to why Hopkins chose to format the stanza in that particular way, for instance emphasizing the feeling of "riding" and "gliding" (as they each have their line), but I'm a math person, so I don't believe in coincidences. However, I am not, of course, averse to alternative explanations. What do you guys think?
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3 comments:
The shape of a bird is kind of farfetched:
http://www.pokemonelite2000.com/ani083.gif
Ahem. Anyway, I agree-- to not interpret a piece of writing is difficult enough. But to not interpret a piece of poem is harder still. I often find myself tiptoeing on the line of interpretation and stating facts. We've already peer edited once, but I've got a feeling I'll get slammed on again for interpreting the poems.
P.S. The site should allow the url tag
As Andrew stated in an earlier comment, "to not interpret a piece of poem is harder still" in comparison to a writing, I think it is also important to realize all the different parts of structure and details of the poem before analyzing. Anyways, the interpretation on the V-shape of the poem actually strikes me as something I would notice as well. Also being a math person, I see the pattern as intentional. I can also imagine my high school teacher telling me that I am over-analyzing the structure of the poem. I don't know if it should be interpreted as birds flying in a "V," but I do feel that there can be a connection. There are, however, the last two stanzas that don't really have that same shape anymore and it is possible that there could have been some kind of shift in to start such a change.
I also had issues with interpreting the poem. The assignment was a lot more difficult than I had initially thought. I wrote my essay, carefully and felt that the end result would be free from interpretation. I was far from right. Even when I really tried my best to avoid interpretation, in the end, the peer revisions revealed that my expository essay was full of interpretations. Some would be obvious and I would wonder how I missed it during my own revision. Others were not quite the same case. After reading through, with all of the suggestions and corrections in mind, I found that some interpretations depended on how the sentence was phrased. Depending on certain things such as word choice or syntax, what was an interpretative sentence became one fit to be in an expository essay.
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