The last word on this, of course, was said by
Randall Jarrell in "The Obscurity of the Poet"
around 1953.

I may like piece that is well constructed metrically, or has great imagery, but if there is no meaning I can comprehend, the good feeling I get from it will fade away quickly. A meaningful piece, that makes me stop and think, will stay with me for a long time. Yes, it's best if a piece succeeds on several levels, but if meaning isn't one of the levels, then the piece's effect, for me, will not last.

Comparing poetry to a visual art can be educational. Let's look at the components of composition - color, line, shape, texture, contrast, detail etc. A photograph that uses one of these elements may capture a viewer's attention momentarily, but will not hold it. A photograph needs to make the viewer's eye move around the composition, finding new interesting components. This piece will hold the viewer's attention longer, and the viewer will take the photograph with them, mentally, when they leave.

What is poetry but painting a picture for the mind's eye, using words rather than paints or a camera? The elements still apply. Make a line graph out of the stresses in a piece - one with well placed contrasts in it will be more interesting than one with a steady wave pattern. Texture can be modified by the rhythym of a piece - it can be harsh, or soft. When imagery is used properly, I can visualize color and shape. Give me detail, and my mental picture becomes sharper.

If I see a photo that is just based on saturated color, I may say 'Neat!', and walk away. If I see a poem that's nothing but imagery, I might do the same thing - but I'll never remember it.

It's possible to 'like' a poem that has no real meaning, but I don't think it can make a real impression on the reader. Some idea has to be conveyed for that to happen.

Robert:
I think I agree that a work has to "work" in various ways before its appeal can be more than superficial. But maybe we need to ponder what we mean by "understanding." (Yes, I know that anyone who questions the meaning of a commonly used word is inviting a firestorm, but I believethose are the words we MUST question, not for obfuscation but for clarity, or at least to reveal the source of the obscurity.) Schools work on the assumption that to understand something is to be able to paraphrase it to someone else's satisfaction (usually someone in authority); following from that is our own panicky feeling when we can't confidently paraprhase it -- "Oh, Lord! What if this is on the midterm!" Those habits of thought are deeply ingrained.
I don't question that paraphrase is a useful excercise. But there may well be other kinds of understanding, maybe a sense of a work's cohesion or tone, for example.
Another issue: We have various reasons for not understanding something, and sometimes we can sense which is the cause. At the simplest level, maybe I don't know what some of the words mean (a recent poem of mine mentioned a springtooth, and my wife, with no rural background, was baffled). Worse yet, maybe I think I know what some of the words mean but I'm wrong (a friend who teaches economics gave a lecture on the flow of goods, and afterwards a student asked what happened if some of the stuff flowing was bad -- No, I'm not making this up). Or the syntax is somehow confusing us. Or the ideas themselves are so new that we can't wrap our brains around them. And then of course there can be combinations of problems. If the poem offers us enough in other ways, if it's tempting enough, so to speak, then maybe we'll be willing first to analyze our own lack of understanding and, second, to remedy it. That has been my experiency, anyway.
Richard

Richard, I agree. I think that in this regard, as in so many others, a poem has to create its own expectations and then live up to them. Somehow a "difficult" poem must comes across as purposely difficult, as a poem that is not "meant" to be understood in a way that allows paraphrase or which admits the reader into the supposed inner circle for whom the poem's references are intended. But when a poem tries to pass itself off as clear, and it's not, it's a problem.

It's interesting to consider that even when a successful poem is "clear" and presents the reader with no apparent difficulties, there are aspects of the poem that cannot be paraphrased. I think this is part of the "justification" for poems that are purposely difficult, as in Jorie Graham, for example, i.e., that the poet is attempting to create a poem that doesn't fool the reader into focusing on what's "clear" but instead requires the reader to react to the ineffable quality that even "clear" poems possess beneath their clear surfaces.

Whatever one may think of such poems, their strategy demands their obscurity and it's not a failure of the poem itself if it's not simple and coherent (though a reader is free not to like that kind of poem). The reader of a Jorie Graham poem can at least take comfort in knowing that he's not "supposed" to understand the poem in conventional ways, but he's supposed to find new ways to access the poem's experience and accessing the ineffable. Just as no one minds not being able to paraphrase a Chopin etude, no one should mind not being able to paraphrase a Jorie Graham poem. But no one needs to love Chopin or Jorie Graham (though I'd be suspicious of anyone who found nothing to love in Chopin).

This is a very interesting discussion. I saw TS Eliot quoted below. I have also read TS Eliot quoted as saying that a poem could be appreciated before it could be understood. Based on what the other person quoted him as saying, perhaps he meant it could be appreciated on a certain level before it is understood.

There are some songs that are fun to sing or listen to even though I cannot understand what they are singing about or perhaps I can't understand what it is they are singing.

I think my appreciation is greater when I get all aspects of the song (or the poem) but that doesn't mean I can't have SOME appreciation without understanding. Sometimes the words that are used or the pictures that are painted are so vivid even if it never comes together for me.

Christin

Richard made a good point when he said that understanding a poem isn't synonymous with the ability to paraphrase or articulate a poem's meaning. I understand more than I can articulate. But words are about communication. If the poet's words don't communicate some understanding to me, it probably means the poet is inarticulate, lazy, or kidding the kidder.

On the other hand, I don't have to understand music or non-representational art to enjoy it. I just have to like the combination of colors, patterns, rhythms, or sounds. There are no badly used words to miscommunicate, and if meaning exists for the artist it needn't concern the viewer. Perhaps the finger whose prominence distracts the watcher from a view of the moon is a sore thumb.

Carol

I read a short article by the neglected English poet Nicholas Moore that said that poetry isn't neccessarily about communication, but it about what he refers to as indication.

By which I think he meant that the poem doesn't neccessarily communicate the whole of an idea or an experience, but that it points us toward ideas and experiences that we might find interesting/moving and that we can then explore for ourselves.

In that sense, I think we can appreciate some poems before we understand them: because, although we don't completely "get" them, they leave us with something to think about or to feel; we take something away from them because they open up new spaces in our heads. That was, for instance, my experience with Eliot, with Frank O'Hara and Ashbery.

I get it less and less from poems I can paraphrase in a few sentences.

------------------
Steve Waling

I guess it's a bit late to apologize for my loosely worded initial question :). The Times Higher Edu Supplement over here had something about whether the word "understand" should be dropped because it has too many meanings. Does "Understanding a poem" mean that
* you can express it in your own words
* you can take it apart, and put it together again
* you know what it's for
* you know the cause of it
? If not why not?

Some things I can't like until I understand them.
There are other things that I like less when I come to understand them more.
There are yet other things where if I like them I feel that in some sense I must already be understanding them.

And them there's the issue of what kind of knowledge works of art provide and how it stands in relation to "rational knowledge".

I suppose my only conclusion is that poetry's a wide church where many of these approaches (including some from non-verbal, non-representational fields) can apply (or at least it's fun trying to apply them).

Tim: Your metaphor of poetry as "a wide church" is apt. It's no coincidence that much religious teaching is through parables, symbols, and metaphors -- and our religious beliefs often seem thin when expressed directly. The way of knowing we get in parable and metaphor is indirect, necessarily indirect, because the point is for us to be engaged on various levels: intellect, emotions, viscera. The poem becomes part of our experience; it IS an experience, much more so than a mere lesson can ever be. So I think that complete understanding (no, the illusion of complete understanding) can work against the greater meaning of a poem.
I often try to get my students to hold off trying to paraphrase a poem until we've spent some time with it. Otherwise, their tendency, often, is to reduce the poem to a phrase that would fit on a bumper sticker: "Slow down and smell the roses," "People handle grief in different ways," "Gee, I guess my father loved me after all." Paraphrase can be a substitute for understanding, maybe even a way to dodge something unsettling, although it may be unsettling simply because it doesn't reduce to a bumper sticker. And that brings us back to religion...
RPW

Oh come now. If you can't appreciate what you don't understand, then how is anyone able to come to understand anything? Sometimes I'll quickly shoot through a rather abstract modern poem and not take the time to figure out exactly what the author is saying, and hey, generally I still like the poem. Some of my favorite poets have a habit of being to vague to ever be quite sure what they're talking about. I feel this simply lets the reader project whatever meaning he/she wants upon it. Hell, even when a meaning or purpose is clearly defined, people still often interpret the meaning through the obscured lens of their own personal experience. Of course, I've always been a fan of the abstract. Also, I absolutely adore modern art.

d . r . m o h n e y
thedman2000@yahoo.com