I've been thinking, with all that we critique and analyze in class, we come up with a lot of possible explanations to answer why a piece of work is the way it is. And at times we come to really good and valid conclusions, and at other times we fumble around in the dark.
But I've been thinking, is there always an intention or a meaning behind everything that the author or creator makes? Two recent examples that got me to considering this are of Frank O'Hara and Harriette Mullen. Much of O'Hara's writing seems to be merely portraying a particular incident or observation of his on that given lunch day. Mullen creates her poetry through the ispiration of dictionary games.
In analyzing these poems, we come up with many key points and ideas behind them. But is it possible that they could have been written just for the sake of putting pen to paper? Maybe there were no thoughts or underlying reasons for doing so, but they were just created, perhaps aimlessly.
One instance that brought this to my attention was during pin-ups for Environmental Design 1, where we showcase our work on the wall. The reviewers (professor and GSIs) interpretted various works and possible reasons for why the collages were a certain way, and sounded very astute in their observations.
One comment was, "the hint of pink used throughout this collage perfectly accents the dimmed lights within the museum, and it really carries across well to the viewer. We get a sense of colors blending in together due to the lighting." It was something to this extent. "Was this why you chose to include this color?"
"No... my printer was just running low on ink..."
And this GSI stood there, stumped, with many annonymous giggles to highlight the embarrassment. And this happened on numerous occasions, with similar responses, such as "No... I ran out of cardboard" or "I didn't have anymore photos to include." We all found this hilarious :]
So my question is, is it always necessary to find meanings behind everything (especially for Mullen) ? It seems like sometimes we may just be swinging in the dark.
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5 comments:
I definitely think that you're asking the right question here. I think this is something most student forget when they interpret a work; they think there has to be meaning in everything. But I agree with you- not everything has to be symbolic of something else, it could just be there "just because." As a matter of fact, I think our notions that everything has to have meaning may actually take away from productive analysis.
I think poetry and writing in general is quite useless if it's just there for the sake of being there. If there's no point, well...there's no point! Poetry is a sort of study of language and thought, so obviously the author has something to say about what he or she is doing. Maybe what he or she is trying to say is "nothing", but in a way, the author is still giving us an impression or a thought, rather than just BS'ing a piece of writing. I agree that there doesn't always need to be concrete "meaning" or theme to a poem, but there still needs to be some content, somehow. Mullen's work is more structurally and language-oriented, and there isn't much alliteration or literary meaning to it all, but it's still a study of words and structure that can give us insights about poetry.
I agree with the point that with O'Hara and Mullen, there is no sense of a conventional "point" or "meaning". I think that much of their poetry, Mullen's in particular, lies more in the craftmanship of the poem itself, rather than some deeper meaning or higher interpretation.
Although I also feel this way about Mullen and O'Hara's work sometimes, I'm still convinced there is some point to writing those poems, although we may be looking in the wrong places. Likewise, when your GSI was trying to find meaning in your collage, he was simply looking in the wrong place. I'm sure you did intend the collage to have some meaning(even if it was: I made this collage because I don't want to fail the class. Haha). Similarly, these poems might have meaning, we're just looking in the wrong places.
I have wondered about this sometimes too, especially after we read that William's poem about eating the plums. I think this is the reason many students like us don't like analyzing things. Theres always the possibility that the author of a work just wrote for the sake of writing. I think we talked about how O'Hara might've written his poems because he needed money or something. I think we probably will never know if there was a real point in the literary works we wrote unless we ask the actual authors (although many of them are already dead). Hopefully, if we ever to get a chance to talk to these authors, their reason behind their works, the works we put so much thought into analyzing, was something as trivial as "my printer was running low on ink".
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