But What Does the Poem Mean?

But What Does the Poem Mean?

Many readers and teachers of poetry emphasize, above all else, finding out the meaning of a poem. They anxiously seek to decode and paraphrase a poem, or worse, make others paraphrase it (e.g. their students). Any wonder why so few people like poetry. When these self-same people write poetry, they most always tell the reader in the closing lines what meaning the reader should have drawn from their poem. They thus distance themselves and others from the experience of poetry. If, as A.E. Housman has stated, the hallmark of poetry is emotion (and all else is just verse), these people distance themselves from feeling emotion. They successfully bottle up the genie in the jar. They won’t let it escape.

A much better question to ask would be “what is the emotional impulse of the poem?” But even this question is too analytic. Read the poem and experience it. Nonsense poems can be enjoyed because of their sound, cadence, and music. Consider “Jabberwocky” or “The Owl and the Pussycat”. Just what does “Jabberwocky” mean? Does lack of an objective meaning ruin its impact? Can one enjoy without decoding the meaning?

Read a poem and note your experience of it. Where do the images carry you? How does the sound, music, cadence, texture affect you? What emotions do you feel? If you experience nothing, it is likely that it is the fault of an inferior poem (i.e. verse) and not you. What new insights into yourself or the world do you gain? What empathy is awakened? The experienced poet starts with an emotional impulse and applies his Craft to construct the genie. The open-to-experience reader reads and releases the genie. Much like music, dance, sculpture, and painting do.

Of course, the emotional impulse could lead to a gush of BS like much of the poetry after 9/11. The gush may have served a good purpose for the writer, but leaves the reader adrift. That is where the Craft of a poet enters. The poet uses his Craft to control the emotion and so optimally manipulate the reader. For example, Form is one element of Craft. Affected by a powerful emotional impulse, the poet can choose to write a sonnet. The emotion thus gets bundled into a tight package from which it strains to escape, becoming all the more powerful. The worst use of a Form like a sonnet is in turning one’s prose essay into that Form. I do not mean manipulate in the bad sense of controlling the reader. The reader will resist by stopping reading. I mean manipulate by guiding the reader.

The poet cannot also totally control himself. Once embarked on his poem by emotional impulse, the poet must be open to where it leads. Frost rightly said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader”. This quote can be extended to all feeling, such as “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader”.  The poet must be open to the unanticipated guest genie.

In addition to Form, there are a dozen or more elements of poetic Craft. They all aim at optimizing the experiencing of the poem by the reader. Optimizing the release of the genie. From the first line that entices the reader to the last line that leaves an indelible reverberation in the mind of the reader. Craft is a subject of a book of its own. Read, write, and enjoy verse, but don’t call it poetry or yourself a poet.

To borrow from Emerson Gilmore, “The poet does not give you words to recreate his experience in you, but he gives you the consecrated moments in which you will enlarge your own being.”

©  Sherman K. Poultney  3 June 2011