by David B. Axelrod

*The same can be applied to any writing you wish to "interpret"! 

Have you ever felt that the trouble with poetry is no one knows what it means? That could be a problem, except it may be one of the delights of poetry as well! In fact, there is no reason to shy from poetry or worse dislike it for fear of not understanding it. There is a perfectly good way to approach poetry which empowers you as a reader even as it allows others room for their interpretation.

Let's start with the notion that many poets do know what they want their poem to mean. In fact, at least one way poets can judge the effectiveness of their poetry is to see if what they have written gets the results they desired. That works very well in a creative writing class, as the poetry a student writes becomes the text for the day's discussion. An active group of readers/fellow writers can offer a close reading of the poem and the author, sitting silently at the side of the discussion, can glean whether the words have communicated what the author intended.

It is important to acknowledge that many authors, among whom some prominent names can be included, don't seem to care at all what readers think their poetry means. Similarly, there is an old adage that "the author knows not what he/she writes, " referring to the real possibility that there are ways to read a poem of which an author may have been unconscious.

However, let us make it a given that for every word, for every punctuation mark or omission of punctuation, every poetic device, for every detail of a poem, the author had a particular purpose and meaning in mind.

The job of the reader, then, would be to trust that, reading and reacting in detail to each word, it would be possible to come up with the "correct" meaning of the poem. The author, in turn, could smile with satisfaction at how clearly he/she had written the poem. A poem would only be good poem to the degree a consensus of readers could agree on exactly what it meant.

It should be noted that poems which are generalized or abstract, by their very nature, would be less likely to provide a single, specific meaning for a group.

People might agree that a poem is about a longing to be loved between two individuals but there might be no indication if the love longings were between a man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, parent and child! The reader could, nonetheless, provide personal associations that would explain the effect the poem had and of course, suggestions could still be made as to word choices and technique.

It should also be noted that a discussion of this kind of a poem should not lead the reader to say "poems can mean whatever you want them to." Again, for the process to work, we assume that we, as readers, should be able to agree what the words on the page mean. (An author who doesn't care at all might consider whether to withdraw from the activity. Why would an author present to others if the author didn't care at all?)

One name for reading and commenting on poems in this way is "explication of the text." Several links are provided with this discussion should you wish to read more about "explication." A scholarly definition can be found at http://globegate.utm.edu/french/globegate_mirror/exptext.html 

A sample college course explanation can be found at http://maven.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/explication/ 

WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EXPLICATION? 

CLICK: HOW TO EXPLICATE

ARE YOU READY TO TRY INTERPRETING A POEM? 

CLICK: EXPLICATION OF A POEM

ARE YOU SOMEONE SCARED OF POEMS WITH DEEP HIDDEN MEANINGS?

CLICK: HIDDEN MEANINGS