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
Quote:
Originally posted by Tim Love:
[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 ...
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