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Poetry - and how I suck at interpreting it

The Sparrow

Graduate Poster
The Sparrow
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I have a love hate thing with poetry. I think the hate comes in when there is some sort of implication of a message, usually near the end, which is some sort of gotcha line that 'makes the overall point' of the poem, and which I inevitably completely miss. It happens in literature and movies with me too. I have more of a logical procedural mind, so I miss symbolism and subltely like crazy. Once someone points it out to me its bloody obvious of course, but I cant work it out on my own.

I love all the metaphors and similies and all the other devices, its more of the big picture I am useless at.

Its especially frustrating because often I KNOW there is something there I'm supposed to be 'getting', but I just cant 'see' it.
 
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I love poetry, and tend to agree with you. I often miss the "point" of poems, at least in the sense of being able to paraphrase it. I think good poems tell their point well, or don't have one to tell.

It's one of the banes of both student and teacher. Students are taught to look for meanings and messages, and then attacked by teachers for doing it.

I recall one 9th grade teacher vociferously berating another student for speaking of a poem's "hidden meaning," and then spending the rest of the lesson teasing symbolism out of "The Emperor of Ice Cream" and getting it, to my mind, stupidly wrong. Of course "The Emperor of Ice Cream" is, among other things, a great poem and very short. The lesson would have been much better spent rereading it and then shutting up.

Archibald McLeish famously stated in one poem that "a poem should not mean but be." Teachers of my youth loved that line, and then spent the rest of their time violating it.

Billy Collins has another take on it:

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

I spent much of my wasted youth trying to tell teachers that if you want the best version of the message in the poem, read the damn poem.
 
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Have you any examples? I think that, just maybe, interpretation of poems (or any art) is a kind of apophenia; you see with your mind, not the author's. Perhaps we can post interpretations of something to see how they align?
 
The perfect writing is a blank page. The perfect painting faces the wall. All else is art.
 
Not a great example but:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/51607

I'm with him all the way until the last 3 lines, then I'm left scratching my head.
...
Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.

There's no pronoun so is he meaning the old man? The old man should be questioning the author? His questions drive the author to think/write and create? Did he wish the old man asked him about his poetry one more time so he could talk about it? Does he regret not sharing it with the old man more?

I love Heaney's stuff but he has a habit of getting cryptic (to me ) in his last few lines and I'm left scratching my head thinking something is there, and I am not getting it.
 
Okay, I'll go read it and reply before reading the rest of your post.

I took the last stanza to be about the ghost of the dead fisherman. How the author misses his questions about poetry that came best in the rainy nights they used to share; about how the ghost departs finally with the morning; never to return.
 
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The Sparrow said:
Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.

There's no pronoun so is he meaning the old man? The old man should be questioning the author? His questions drive the author to think/write and create? Did he wish the old man asked him about his poetry one more time so he could talk about it? Does he regret not sharing it with the old man more?

I love Heaney's stuff but he has a habit of getting cryptic (to me ) in his last few lines and I'm left scratching my head thinking something is there, and I am not getting it.
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Yeah! We chimed. I like the ambiguity of the end. To me it's like a paintbrush that's leaving the page, it takes off and leaves a blurred mark to show its passage. Words can do the same: going from descriptive to cryptic to evoke an emotion.
 
What a lovely thread!

"The perfect writing is a blank page. The perfect painting faces the wall. All else is art."

Did you make that up, Donn? I like it! No doubt someone will come along and call it pretentious, but they will be refusing to think by that bigot's conceit, and so we can dismiss them as irrelevant to our experience of life.

I must get back to my wife for now, so I'll see you folks later.

Be well!

a Syd
 
asydhouse said:
"The perfect writing is a blank page. The perfect painting faces the wall. All else is art."

Did you make that up, Donn? I like it! No doubt someone will come along and call it pretentious, but they will be refusing to think by that bigot's conceit, and so we can dismiss them as irrelevant to our experience of life.
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Guilty. Thanks. Yes, it does sound pretentious, and maybe it is. I am shy about limelight; about showing artwork. What it means is not that the art unseen is superior to any shown, but that to the artist the highest form of expression is so personal, so quick, that to exhibit it would lessen it in proportion to pride.

A mess, I confess.
 
Magrat said:
I don't understand poetry, most "modern" fiction, song lyrics, or much of anything.

I think the words are supposed to make a picture in your mind. But I don't understand mettyfors.
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They're like pretty paws pressing into your feels. :P
 
The only form I am mildly good at (IMHO) is Haiku, though I break most of the classical rules.

I gently blow
Steam from my coffee cup
into your eyes

:P
 
Donn said:
Okay, I'll go read it and reply before reading the rest of your post.

I took the last stanza to be about the ghost of the dead fisherman. How the author misses his questions about poetry that came best in the rainy nights they used to share; about how the ghost departs finally with the morning; never to return.
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Meaning the old mans questions to the author about the author's poetry?
I can live with that. I think when there are few pronouns, I easily get confoooozed.
 
The Sparrow said:
Meaning the old mans questions to the author about the author's poetry?
I can live with that. I think when there are few pronouns, I easily get confoooozed.
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Yes, the old man. The ghost is the author's memory (of the old man) during his private boat wake. (Hey-hey!).

The pronouns evaporate taking the sense away, leaving sensation. If that makes sense.
 
Donn said:
Yes, the old man. The ghost is the author's memory (of the old man) during his private boat wake. (Hey-hey!).

The pronouns evaporate taking the sense away, leaving sensation. If that makes sense.
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Actually, yes it does make sense. It kind of minimizes the subjective self and leaves just a ... 'thing' before my brain gets a hold of it and adds all the baggage.
 
Magrat said:
I don't understand poetry, most "modern" fiction, song lyrics, or much of anything.

I think the words are supposed to make a picture in your mind. But I don't understand mettyfors.
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Here's one just for you Magrat aka whatever kind of kitten that was I forget....

No metaphors and meta analyses and cribs required, and the person who wrote it got a Nobel prize too.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/true-love-368/

edit to add: One of the least controversial Nobels of recent years, for good reason.
 
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The Sparrow said:
Here is one that I would struggle with to the point of frustration.
Ted Hughes can paint wonderful images, but for overall meaning I am lost


https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=29571
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Stop trying so hard. Many times, there just isn't the deep, obtuse, meaning in there. Many times, it's unknowable to all but the author.

If you enjoy poetry but don't like obtuse, go with someone like Byron, who you can enjoy even if you don't understand exactly what the hell he's getting at, or some of the imagery masters like Issa or Basho. You could also try Rumi, who tends to spell his meaning out exactly.
 
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