Lovely Literature

Perrine kind of sounds like he knows what he is talking about since he uses outside resources to back up what he says about poetry, like comparing a poem to "an ink blot in a Rorshach personality test," but I don't agree with everything he says. Let's just start with what I do agree with I suppose. I like how Perrine addresses the fact that a poem can be interpreted in many different ways, but it is not meant for the author to interpret his own poem. I would think the author would want to have some mysteriousness in the writing, so it seems only fair that they keep the true meaning to themself. I definitely completely interpreted the poems differently than how Perrine interpreted them, but I still like my interpretations because that is the beauty of poetry. I believe everyone should be able to read a poem and allow their imagination to wander anywhere it wants to go along the lines of the words.

On the other hand, it really irritates me how he states,"If it is contradicted by any detail it is wrong," in reference to interpreting poetry. That just sounds bad because any person with an imagination can spin something so it includes every detail, including words in a poem. He says that a poem with multiple interpretations should be narrowed down to one interpretation by choosing which ever account sounds more "real..." yeah, I'm not a big fan of that either. Poetry is an art form; therefore, imagination is required. Far-fetched interpretations turn out to the be the best ones sometimes!

I guess I will say though that for reading poetry in class, it would definitely be easier to match the details exactly with interpretations and choose the interpretation that sounds more "real," but I just do not like what that takes away from poetry as an art form. Art is supposed to be expressive and imaginative...so who are we to take away from what the author could actually want us to see in it?