For poetry readers...

[Beren3000]

Here's a post by someone in another board:

I find it interesting that so many people go to various poetry sites looking for help -- what does the poem mean? how does one interpret the poem, etc, etc.

My question -- why bother reading poetry at all? Who cares what someone else thinks or feels about a particular poem. A poem should be a unique/personal experience -- indeed, I do not even think it matters what the poet himself may have intended. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

I wanted to know what you guys think of this point of view?

[inked]

I think this is an absolutely erroneous view of poetry. The author of this statement makes everything subjective to the person of self, dixcounting even the ability of the poet to know what is intended or meant. By that logic this interpretation is a clear interpretation of the principle that NO ONE can understand any attempt at communication. Been nice pretending to chat with you all, hasn't it? Surprise yourself that some philososphical aspects of yourselves are abolutist like the me you have imagined?

Total subjectivism is the consequence of this view; when fully ripened, it is known as hell!

Poetry is the attempt by the poet to allow us an experience shared. It may be emotional, psychological, spiritual, religious, scientific, physical, et cetera. The poet stands aside, as it were, to let us see through another's eyes. In that vision we may be able to discern aspects of the poet's personality, capabilities, and limitations, but ONLY if the poet succeeds in communicating the experience to us for our comprehension and understanding, so that we may reflect upon it and reflect it back. The subjective is a minor part of the poetic experience.

The lies the poets tell us may be nearer to the truth than rationality can grasp...(paraphrased)... CS Lewis.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by inked

Total subjectivism is the consequence of this view; when fully ripened, it is known as hell!

Agreed!

However, here's where I disagree:

Originally Posted by inked

The subjective is a minor part of the poetic experience.

If that were true, we would all enjoy the same poems to the same degree. Some people respond more to certain "experiences" shared with us by the poet than others. Plus, factors such as cultural background, mindset, etc... affect a person's reaction to a poem.

[inked]

Originally Posted by Beren3000

Agreed!

However, here's where I disagree:

If that were true, we would all enjoy the same poems to the same degree. Some people respond more to certain "experiences" shared with us by the poet than others. Plus, factors such as cultural background, mindset, etc... affect a person's reaction to a poem.

No, I think that is an errant statement to say we should all enjoy specific poems to the same degree. Individual response is coloured by subjective responses as you indicate - which I describe as a minor component - but it is the experienced, the particularity observed by the poet and expressed to our comprehension, that is the universal shared under the ability of the poet to make us see it. It does not depend on our having the same set of subjective experiences, and, indeed, if we read poetry solely that way, we lose the poet's vision and replace it with our own. Now, we do react to that vision as well, but not until we see as the poet has taught us to see. Our ability to see what the poet has seen is mostly the product of the poet's skill and felicity. THEN - and only then - do we react subjectively.

Nor does our reaction subjectively make the poem. It is the communicated experience, its successsful entry into our experience, that allows our reaction.
Ergo, our subjective experience coloring the poem is minor. Minor could encompass up to 49% of the poetic experience though .

[Rosie Gamgee]

Originally Posted by Beren3000

I wanted to know what you guys think of this point of view?

As a writer of poetry, I think that poets want, to a certain extent, their readers to identify with their peoms. But, in order to internalize some poems, it is necesary for the reader to give, or gain, a different meaning from the poem than perhaps the writer intended. Sometimes a writer wants this to happen- his/her poetry to be slightly different things to different people. And, to a degree, all writing is like this. That is the beauty- and sometimes the handicap- of communication: that stories and experiences shared by others to us are always viewed through the filter of our own knowledge and experiences.

However, I think that to disregard even the poet's intended meaning in a piece is to not fully appreciate the work. How do you know if you really understand the poem if you take it to mean what you want it to mean? If we went through life like this, taking all communication how we want to take it only and not how it is meant, no one would be able to understand each other! We might as well speak gibberish. Poetry, and all art, is a form of expressing oneself, and it is first the expression that the readers/veiwers/hearers should strive to comprehend, not the impression. Only when you hear and understand exactly what someone is trying to say can your response to it be perfect.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by inked

Minor could encompass up to 49% of the poetic experience though

Ok. I can live with that!

[Fat middle]

I think that one thing is subjectivism and one another relativism. Where the analyized statement leads to IMHO is to absolute relativism. And that's where I disagree with its athor. The poet doesn't look for relativism he looks for truth (the opposite concept).

But poetry IMHO, again, leads to truth (or at least try to) through subjetivism, because there are two subjects involved in it: the poet and the reader.

If a poem is good that subjetivism helps to enrich our view of the truth. Be it a conceptual truth or a sensorial truth (beauty).

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Fat Middle

But poetry IMHO, again, leads to truth

I absolutely agree!

Originally Posted by Fat Middle

If a poem is good that subjetivism helps to enrich our view of the truth.

But if you allow for subjectivism in your interpretation of the poem, how do you know that the truth you reach is the one intended by the poet?

[Fat middle]

Originally Posted by Beren3000

I absolutely agree!

But if you allow for subjectivism in your interpretation of the poem, how do you know that the truth you reach is the one intended by the poet?

You cannot In fact I think that it's almost impossible to have the exact "image" in the mind that the poet has got.

But that doesn't mean that all interpretations are equally valid (that'd be relativism) or that it doesn't matter what was intended by the poet as far as I find my own interpretation (that'd be relativism too). When I say that subjetivism must be allowed (in fact I think it cannot be avoided) I mean that we must count with it. Other conception of poetry would be to unreal (pretending it to be excesively determined) and it'd make it loose part of its way of being. Poetry is not "objetive" as exact sciences are.

But, again, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to understand the poet's vision.

Have I clarified my point?

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Fat Middle

Have I clarified my point?

I think!
If I understand it correctly, then it's similar to what I've stated above:

Originally Posted by Beren3000

Plus, factors such as cultural background, mindset, etc... affect a person's reaction to a poem.

Is that what you meant?

[Fat middle]

Originally Posted by Beren3000

If I understand it correctly, then it's similar to what I've stated above:

Is that what you meant?

Yeah! Definetely that's part of what I meant.

[Count Comfect]

I think reading a poem is a kind of subconscious dialogue between the person who wrote and the person who reads - with the poet's intention in the poem and the subjectivity of the reader combining to make each reading by each reader different. So the subjective plays a large role, but to dismiss the poet's intent would be folly.

Also, reading a poem twice will reveal different things about it (well, not if you just read the same thing twice in a row with no gap). Which is interesting.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

Also, reading a poem twice will reveal different things about it (well, not if you just read the same thing twice in a row with no gap). Which is interesting.

I've always thought this had to do with one's state of mind (i.e. it was subjective): I mean that you might be in a certain state of mind that would lead you to read the poem as expressing such or such idea that you're currently thinking about. When you reread the poem a few days later, with a new mindset, you have a new idea that you now think the poem echoes, and so on...