Perrine's predicament on pondering poetry

 

Before I start this blog, I feel like I should point out that I am definitely guilty of having wondered how some personal interpretations of blogs are considered "wrong" by my teachers.  Having read Perrine's theory on judging the credibility of interpretation has really struck me by its truth.  The example by Huxley about a thief really struck me the most because of how simple it was to relate with.  I had never actually realized that when I interpret a poem that I might be making a really farfetched assumption about the setting of the poem that was either lacking for a specific reason or possibly even contradictory of the details already present in the poem.  When I read him say that the correct interpretation relies on the fewest assumptions, I had to question the validity of my previous interpretations.  Looking back on the three poems you had us read earlier this week, I can see how my interpretations were similar to having a monkey steal my silver ware just to have a "hobo" peak in my window.  I still really do not agree with his idea of these interpretations being lacking though, they just may be a little more creative - yes, that was just a round about way of saying that they are wrong, but I really do not believe there can be a wrong interpretation of a poem!  I almost feel like Perrine is not completely opposed to seeing validity in more obscure opinions since he did compare them to Rorschach tests in the first paragraph which indicates that he understands the need for diversity in answers.  However, I do fully agree that if too many assumptions are made about the meaning behind a poem, then it does definitely need some serious reconsideration.

Reading Perrine's interpretations make me feel very confused, not because I do not understand the logic, but because two of the three interpretations were actually jokingly suggested by me during small group discussions.  For the Emily Dickinson poem, I too at first saw the flowery field, but then the next morning when I reacquainted myself with the poems, I did faintly see the sunset - I was just trying to think of purple and yellow things, but that was as far as I got since I did not figure out the clouds.  I feel like him completely discrediting the vision that so many people got is unfair for them.  Poetry for me has always been open for interpretation, and while I understand that not every interpretation is correct, I feel like the most common one is probably the one which the author was going for and one that seems more correct is just crazy coincidence.  For the Whitman vs Melville debate, I do see where he is coming from and will have to agree with Perrine, though I was not even remotely close to that.  I suppose when I study the poems, I should pay more attention to the adjectives relations to the nouns.  Lastly, his observations on symbols, seem very close to my beliefs.  In addition, I find it very odd that the Blake poem could be just a literal meaning, though I did actually suggest that to my group, it was in a completely sarcastic tone.

Sorry, I can't figure out how to get rid of this page break.