[Katy Evans-Bush]

Thanks, Kevin! I had just got to the end where I was going to say that many times even the poet doesn't know all of what's in a poem, when I got to your post.

The whole point about writing poetry - well, okay, part of it - is that you're channeling your unconscious. I think, really, time and again in these kinds of discussions, the external terms of reference just seem at odds with the creative process. You an't notice every effect you use in a really good poem. Some of it just has to happen.

More generally, I think a poem, a good, successful one, is like a piece of fabric. It's a made thing. It has its own shape, it has become an object in its own right. You can fold it, bend it, see through it if you hold it up to the light, but it is still what it is. What this means for interpretation of poems is that you can see what the author intended - it's 3' square, it has red and purple flowers - but you can still identify other things with it - your umbrella when you were a kid had similar flowers, or you know this kind of pattern was popular in the sixties, or you're familiar with the designer's other products, or whatever. One person will be sensitive to the three shades of green in the foliage, another will notice the contrast with the brown background. One will think red & purple clash, another won't, a third will say it clashes ironically. One will love its translucence, another will think it looks cheap. Of course fabric doesn't usually have subtext, but you get my drift. I think a well-made poem will still be in its own shape once a reader's done with it. Part of education is learning what to do with it & what will shrink it.

KEB

[Robin-Kemp]

YES, yes yes yes yes! That's the missing point--that there is a plowing of the unconscious (or sometimes just a scratching of its surface). I do come down on the side of learning craft so that it can be absorbed into the subconscious, much the way that compost is absorbed into a good garden-bed, rather than continually drawing from the same tired soil. Whether cultivated roses or wild self-seeding perennials pop up is the gardener's purview. But guests (readers) generally don't come in and rip out the plant at the roots without permission (workshop). People can look, touch, smell all they like (read) and talk about whether they do or don't like what they find (review).

So whatever side that forces me to choose, fine...

Robin, subconsciously gardening in April

[This message has been edited by Robin-Kemp (edited April 11, 2006).]

[Lance Levens]

I look at the question from a historical perspective. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the word "unconscious," denoting an absence of free will, was not common prior to the late 19th century when Freudian psychology made its claim to be a legitimate scientific discipline. If that is the case, isn't Marilyn's original question similar to the question about the sound of the tree falling in the forest? If the idea of an unconscious did not exist, doesn't that indicate that few readers considered that there might be an meaning the author did not intend? Can we say that such a meaning existed if there was no one there to encode it?

Lance Levens

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Lance, they called it the Muse.

KEB

[Maryann Corbett]

While Lance is using historical perspective to support the view that the author's conscious purpose should control, I would argue that it can also be used in the other direction, at least in some periods of history. My argument is from D. W. Robertson's A Preface to Chaucer.

For educated medieval readers the prevailing model of interpretation was interpretation of Scripture, a complicated matter with many levels, and one that certainly did not limit itself to the literal or "original" meaning of a text.

For example, a medieval interpreter would have no trouble looking at a verse of the Song of Songs--"Thy teeth are as sheep coming up from the washing"--and declaring that the teeth represent the doctors of the church, whose teachings tear away error. The idea of sticking to the intentions of a single human author was just not big in medieval people's thinking.

Now, the students who usually answer the original question probably wouldn't know that argument, but I think we're allowed to take it into account.

In short, the idea of what a text means can and does change, even if authors do not like that fact.

Maryann

[Daniel Pereira]

C. A poem means whatever *I* think it means.

The question really hinges on the definitions of two tricky terms here: "means" and "a poem" By the common sense definitions of these words, it's B.

"Means" implies an intent. We do not (except idly) ask what the wind or water means, because we do not expect their motions to have intent (except perhaps in a religious sense). The question then becomes who drives that intent: the writer or the reader?

The common sense definition of a poem is that it's text or words or whatever. Under this definition, a poem can exist without a reader, but it cannot exist without a writer. Therefore the intent of the poem must be the writer's, not the reader's.

If you change that verb to any relatively synonymous word -- expresses, conveys, suggests, denotes, signifies, represents -- then the answer might change. At the least, "signifies" and "represents" more easily lend themselves to A than "means" does. In reality, of course, a poem does all these things: it means, expresses, conveys, suggests, denotes, signifies, represents, implies, stands for, transmits, communicates etc, and each of those modes of being takes place in a subtly different register.

42 is also an excellent answer.
-Dan

[This message has been edited by Daniel Pereira (edited April 12, 2006).]

[Lance Levens]

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).]

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Dan writes:

42 is also an excellent answer.

Thank you, Dan! I was hoping someone would notice.

KEB

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

I've always thought a good poem allows the reader leeway to interpret meaning according to his or her experience - allowing them to 'read between the lines'.

I've always enjoyed a critter putting meaning to what I've written, even when it doesn't match what I had in mind when I wrote it. If it made them think, or made them feel, I accomplished what I intended.

Sometimes, if experiences are similar enough, they get my intent - and that's grand, also.

IMO, if we direct the reader's thought too narrowly, explain everything, we're invading the realm of prose.

Just my opinion...

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited April 14, 2006).]

[nyctom]

Choosing either A or B would raise a question: if that is the case, what do we need critics for?