"Sometimes my doctors tell me that I understand something in a poem that I haven't integrated into my life. In fact, I may be concealing it from myself,while revealing it to the readers." Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
If a person reads something into a poem that I have not intended to convey, who is the wiser? It seems to me more and more that static poetry might as well be prose. Not to say anything is wrong with prose, only that there is a reason for the differing literary art forms.
If twenty people read a poem I have written and and nineteen see and feel something close to what I was saying, then hooray for the one who saw something different. We've evidently had different life experiences. They see something I don't.
Is it just me, or is the font size a little smaller than normal in this entry?
ReplyDeleteDear James:
ReplyDeleteYes, and that's my final answer. :)
I agree with Sexton's doctors--thanks for this quote, BTW. Poets unconsciously grasp and reveal truths that they don't yet understand with their rational minds. The poem often "knows" more than the poet. Ucomfortable thought, that, for some of us. I think it happens in prose, too, (:::thinking of the lyrical essay:::) though not as densely as in poetry.
ReplyDeleteHave bookmarked your blog for daily checking. Good stuff.
I'm always arguing in workshops and classes (or "suggesting") how little I care about authorial intention. It's not that I'm an advocate of reader response--I do believe that it is best for serious poetry readers to relate their experience of the poem back to the text--but I find it much more exciting and interesting to experience how a poem affects me, what it means to me, how it makes me feel, without being concerned about trying to figure out what the author wants me to think and feel. Although that interests me too--I just don't want my experience of the poem to be limited by it.
ReplyDeleteReally like the blog--I'm adding a link to you on my site.