I agree that the impulse is to make something, not to say something, at least for me. But it's clear that not everyone feels that way. So often at Erato someone makes a suggestion for a poem, and the poet says something like, "Thanks, but that would change what the poem is saying," or "But that would make it a different poem," or "But what I was attempting to show was . . ." There's definitely a notion afoot that the goal isn't just to write a good poem, but a particular good poem that the poet has in mind.
To me this is a counterproductive attitude, since as a reader I really don't care in the slightest what a poet I never even met "wanted" to say. It's easy enough for me to just assume that the poem says what the poet set out to say. If it's a fine poem, I don't care at all if the poet is frustrated because it's not the fine poem she set out to write in the first place. Readers don't judge a poem by how successfully it satisfies the poet's pre-existing ideas or agenda.
I'm not saying that meaning doesn't play a role in the experience of a poem. Though you don't make a poem with words, but ideas, the poem you make with words can't help but expressing ideas as well since words do have a sneaky way of saying things whether you like it or not. To me, ideas are a vitally important element in a poem, just as rhyme and meter and form are vitally important elements, but just as I'm willing to change a rhyme to make the rhyme scheme come out correctly, I'm also willing to change an idea to make the 'idea scheme' come out correctly or to solve a technical or formal problem. It's all up for grabs, so long as the final poem sounds like it's saying exactly what it set out to say in precisely the words that say it best.
|