[a spin-off from Metrical Poetry:My Secret Kept Alive]

Porridgeface - I can't appreciate what I don't at all understand

Carol Taylor - If a critic says, "I don't understand this but I don't need to understand it to like it," then I know that that critic and I have opposite definitions of poetry

I wonder how others feel about this issue? When reading recently about William Empson (Lowell thought him "the most intelligent poet writing in our language and perhaps the best") I was impressed by how a formidable close-reading theorist like him was happy to say that he loved some Dylan Thomas pieces, but didn't have much of a clue why.

Sometimes I meet poems which don't fit in with my idea of what a good poem should be, but I like them nonetheless. It's a funny world ...

Tim: I didn't follow the controversy over at Metrical Poetry, so in commenting here I may be provoking all kinds of unexpected antagonisms. So be it.
The whole issue of intentionality is vexed. Mostly, we have no way of knowing for sure what anyone means by anything. For that matter, we have no way of knowing whether other people even exist -- for sure. I also wonder why I should believe a writer's vaguely articulate claims about a poem rather than the poem itself. That is, if a writer claims that I misunderstood her poem, why should I assume she is any more able to articulate her meaning spontaneously than she was in verse? I often don't know why I do or say things, and I suspect other folks are pretty much the same way. Sometimes we're pretty good at inventing reasons post hoc, though.
But look, our purpose on these boards is to move one another forward. Talk back to a poem, and see what the writer says in response to what you said. People of good intentions will tend to converge, not necessarily in their tastes but in their understanding of one another. We can hope so, at least. If I "misread" a poem, you may well have "miswritten." Or you may have written differently, maybe better. Or maybe I just didn't explain my response very well.
It has to be a conversation. Even Criticsim, capital "C," has to be just one voice in a conversation of many voices. If we all agreed from the get-go, there'd be no "verse" in the conversation.
RPW

there are different kinds of excellence. the musical kind
("melopoeia") doesn't require intellectual understanding,
nor does the making of visual imagery ("phanopoeia"). ideally,
a poem should succeed on several levels.

i looked at the thread. seems to me what there is disagreement
about is rather, should some degree of semantic/metaphorical
looseness or "play" be considered out of bounds in this game we
like to think is an art?

and i can only answer: if it persuades me to read it again, no.

but the world contains critics who, as in the Sufi parable, if
you point out the moon to them, will only look at your finger.

such people miss many beauties; perhaps the most important
ones.



[This message has been edited by graywyvern (edited January 17, 2002).]

But why do they look at the finger? Perhaps the immediate has a greater mystery than the distant, despite its familiarity - and is just as incomprehensible?

Looking at the finger does have its attractions - it all depends on why you do it - that's not to say that most finger-gazers don't know their arse from their elbow.

N

Strictly speaking, it seems absurd to pretend to appreciate something which you don't understand, unless a very limited definition of "appreciate" is applied. But I think it is possible to have a legitimate aesthetic appreciation of poetry without being able to explicate its meaning, as would be the case with Empson enjoying but "not having a clue about" Dylan Thomas. There is indeed a certain irony in the fact the Empson, one of the arch-angels of New Critical close reading, would express this, but the very fact that he had studied the whole matter of explicable meaning so exhaustively (and, no doubt, with extraordinary intelligence) adds weight to his testimony.

So how can you appreciate something without being able to say what it means? This would entail a kind of tacit, non-explicit understanding. This partly involves the non-intellectual aspects graywyvern refers to, but intellectual aspects too.

One of the hallmarks of modernist poetry is that it tends to resist interpretation. "It must be difficult," I think Harold Bloom says somewhere (but he also endorses Wallace Stevens: "It must give pleasure.") And it is no coincidence that the impulse to elude interpretation coincided, historically, with the monstrous growth of the critical faculty that more or less set out to conquer poetry & reduce it to explicable meanings.

I've been looking at Hart Crane a little bit recently. He is an incredibly difficult poet, but if you stay with him, he begins to make a different kind of sense. There is a difference between "reading" a poem, in the sense of assimilating it to yourself, and "living with" a poem, in the sense of accepting it on its own terms and being patient with it. We tend to consume poetry in the fast-food mode, especially in the extremely time-sensitive environment of the internet. Gulp it down (thoughtfully, of course, but quickly), & report any reactions. This does not encourage subtle poetry.

Hart Crane has some interesting theoretical remarks on these matters too. here's a sentence I marked:

"it is as though the poem gave the reader as he left it a single, new word, never before spoken and impossible to actually enunciate, but self-evident as an active principle in the reader's consciousness henceforward."

I like this as a formula for the potential (& valuable) tacit, inexplicable, meaning of a poem.

But, as a practical matter, it's true that I don't like stuff I can't understand. Unless something convinces me somehow that the writer knows what he or she is doing. Then, maybe, give it room and let it work, as best it can.

T. S. Eliot:

I do not think of enjoyment and understanding as distinct activities--one emotional and the other intellectual...It is certain that we do not fully enjoy a poem unless we understand it; and, on the other hand, it is equally true that we do not fully understand a poem unless we enjoy it.

I'm not familiar with the thread that prompted this one, so my comments are strictly in response to the question raised here.

When I read a poem, understand could mean a few things:

1) I am able to articulate one or more 'responsible' (my english prof's term) interpretations of the poem as a whole.

2) I can't summarize the whole but a recognize a good deal of truth in many of the pieces.

3) I have no idea what the author meant by any of it, but I can articulate the meaning I'd arbitrarily impose on it (the 'what it means to me' when I disregard all evidence of the author's intentions).

I can like, or dislike for that matter, a poem under any of these circumstances.

If I don't understand a poem because I lack some neccessary factual knowledge, and I have reason to believe that I would otherwise enjoy the piece (reputation, recommendation, or something in the work that I find attractive) then I'll do the legwork and try to understand.

If, however, I get the feeling (subjective, I know) that the author is being elusive or esoteric for his or her own self-gratification then I don't enjoy the poem and won't give any additional time to it. (Same I way I refuse to try to understand a canvas painted over in a single color as art.)

I suppose that with all the sensual pleasures readily available these days I need literature to tickle my intellect at least a little in order to enjoy it.

Ginger

It's always unwise to draw analogies too freely between writing and the visual arts, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Compare non-representational art. There is no obvious way to 'understand' what a Mondrian painting is of - but you can still like it. It works on an immediate aesthetic level irrespective of 'meaning'.

But - Vermeer's work has similar visual qualities to Mondrian's, but his paintings are actually of something. I certainly think that the combination of impact and meaning is better than just impact on its own. And only the very best non-representational work really pulls off that trick anyway - mediocre abstract art, without the redeeming human interest, is fantastically dismal.

Harry

To continue the comparison with visual art...
I would argue that there is an element of "understanding" in non-representational art, which is the understanding of the intent. That is, you cannot grasp "subject matter" as in a picture of something, but you can grasp theoretical subject matter, for instance that an abstract painting might be intended to make one ponder on the universality of form (the canvas is blue because "blue" is going to be experienced more similarly by all different people than an actual scene, which is likely to be culture-specific, etc.). In my experience, this theoretical type of musing is often intended by "modern" art/literature. The problem is that much of it seems like nonsense unless the concept is fully explained. I think the question, therefore, is whether it is legitimate for "art" of any kind to need so much explanation; whether that hinders our appreciation.

Personally I would agree that a blend of meaning and interesting/innovative form is desirable. To emphasize form it is not necessary to isolate it from meaning--but perhaps in the course of art history artists have felt that such a radical divorce was necessary to prove a point.

::Marilyn::

The comparison with the visual arts is apt. Also consider music. When you listen to Bach or Chopin, do you know what it's "about"? Yes, of course you do. Can you explain it to me in words? No, in all likelihood you cannot. You can stammer out your impressions, etc., and tell me how it made you feel, but you probably can't translate the music into useful critical discourse containing an explanation of what the music "meant" or "was about."

Some people (at times I'm one of them) feel frustrated by the inability to validate their experience of music or Mondrian with words that we can write down and initial in the margin. But it's not really fair to experience such frustration. To say that the only "meaning" that matters in art is meaning that is susceptible to paraphrase or easy critical analysis is to define away all art that doesn't lend itself to criticism. (It's like choosing to look for a lost item only where the light is good --it ignores the possibility that the object may be in the dark.)

Of course, a poem may resist understanding because it's badly written, or its thoughts are illogical, or because it tried to convey something that it failed to convey, and this would be a flaw in the poem. But there are poems, like Dylan Thomas and others wrote, that resist understanding because they aren't "meant" to be understood in entirely paraphrasable ways but to be understood as music or visual arts are understood. It's harder to discus such poems, but that doesn't make them flawed. It points to a shortcoming of criticism, not the poem.

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

Interesting topic...

It seems from skimming through the various posts that it is not just "understand" that can have a variety of meanings, but also "appreciate".

I can both appreciate, and understand, a poem on any of many levels. The better the poem, the more levels are in play, on both counts.

I can appreciate the sounds and rhythms of a poem I don't understand, in the same way that I can appreciate the sounds of choral music when I can't make out all the words, or when the words are in a different language. Even though the primary function of a word is to convey meaning, I don't think that precludes one from using the other characteristics of a word in order to create art. I think that is a legitimate form of poetry, a sort of sound sculpture, with just enough use of the word meanings to hold them all in place together.

If the sounds are compelling enough, my lack of understanding may not bother me. If they are not, or if it appears that the poem is *supposed* to be using the meanings of the words at least as much as the sounds, then I may be frustrated enough by my lack of understanding that it blocks any appreciation on other levels.


Victoria Gaile