CPCTC

"A poem -- in fact, any pattern of words -- defines an area of meaning, no more. Any interpretation is acceptable which lies within that area" ("The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry," 4).

Sometimes it's easier for me to whine about something a little bit before I can start talking about how I also appreciate it; this principle applies to the essay I just read about poetry, so here I go. Perrine was a little bit too cocky for my taste. Maybe his straightforward assertions made me feel like that irrationally. I felt like he was trying to create strife by saying things like "there are correct and incorrect readings" (1) and "the poem is a description of a sunset" (3). He was ready to be all, "I know you don't think that what I'm saying is true, but I know that it's true, and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong and I'm right." Whatever floats his boat. Then, by the part where he said, "ordinarily we have only the internal evidence of the poem itself on which to rest an interpretation" (3), I was a bit peeved that he was gladly typing pages and pages about how to prove that his interpretations were true without explaining how to discover interpretations. I'm over that now because I realize that his purpose was not to give us explication techniques -- he just wanted to explain that some interpretations are right and that some are wrong, which I can swallow pretty easily after reading what he had to say. Additionally, he actually said a few helpful things to someone like me who's not so great at interpretation.

What I quoted at the beginning of this post was my favorite part. The "area" explanation made complete sense to me. The reason that a poem isn't open to any interpretation is that it has words which limit the interpretation. That doesn't mean that there's always one way to view a poem, but it does mean that there are invalid ways to view it -- namely, when a view falls outside a set area. The more words a writer uses, the smaller that area becomes. That puts a good picture in my mind. Another helpful part of the essay was Perrine's distinguishing between metaphorical poems and symbolic poems. "The essential difference between a metaphor and a literary symbol is that a metaphor means something else than what it is, a literary symbol means something more than what it is" (5). Melville's poem was not (as I originally assumed) about a marching army. It was about the stars because it was metaphorical -- the language in that poem said "stars, stars, stars," and Perrine makes me feel silly for missing that. However, Blake's symbolic poem is open to more interpretation. It's hard for me to grasp that the poem is about a rose and a worm and also about something bigger than them, but it's not hard for me to understand the area to which I must confine what I find the rose and the worm to symbolize. Metaphors are challenging because they point to only one answer that can be difficult to discover. Symbols are challenging because they point to scores of answers that are subject to people's unique takes. So overall, while a few components of the essay made me go "Gahh," it was a helpful piece to read.