Monday, April 11, 2005
understanding
So my thought for the day which I keep trying to write down here is that I do not believe accessibility equals understanding. If a poem is accessible does it mean it is completely understood? I don’t think so. Rebecca stated in her comment that her mother’s friends do not understand some of her poems and I have had that same comment from my father, that is wonderful dear but I do not know what the hell you are talking about. And yet he will go on later to have a twenty minute conversation of what the poem reminded him of and in turn give me ideas for about twenty other poems. I don’t believe a poet should write for a reader but I do believe the writer needs to be aware.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
My dad said the kind of poetry he liked was cowboy poetry. So I stopped sending him mine. Was he hoping I'd start writing cowboy poetry?
In what turned out to be my last visit with my mother I was reading poems to her and she opened her eyes and said, "Your poems aren't always meant to be understood, are they?" Then she asked me to read another one.
I think a lot of the time in school people are taught some really bad ideas about what it means to "understand" a poem. I know I was taught to approach them like little puzzles that had to be decoded and once I'd figured out all the clues, ta-dah! I'd know the Sooper Sekrit Meaning of the thing. Which is great for some poems, but not all (not most, I'd say).
Glenn and anne I think my favorite types of poems are the one I dont understand at all.
Post a Comment