Reply to Maryann and Katy
Ladies, I'm not very good at this type of writing, but I think this is an important question, even though our even raising the issue's moot. In the academy, if I may be so presumptuous as to paraphrase: anything's a text; a text means anything.
The world view that fuels the open ended attitude implied by the statement above has affected every other humanistic discipline so the dispute over what does a poem mean echoes the dispute over what does The Book of Genesis mean and what does the Constitution mean. Please don't misconstrue what I'm saying. Humpty Dumpty has had his great fall and the shattered pieces of a core set of values lie all around us. We can't put Humpty back together again; but any attempt to figure a poem out that answers Marilyn's part A will have to grapple with all that rotting egg.
Best
Lance
[This message has been edited by Lance Levens (edited April 13, 2006).]
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