Perrine- The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry--- Welcome Back

Quote from Pg. 1, para. 1:

According to his theory the poem is like an ink blot in a Rorschach personality test.

I found Perrine's approach to determining the validity of an interpretation of a poem to be rather interesting and almost completely correct. I will admit that I used to think a poem could be completely ambiguous and anyone's theory was as good as the next. However, after reading this handy-dandy packet of enlightenment, I have realized that is not the case. Perrine makes a very good argument in saying that some theories of a poem's meaning are more valid than others. It really made sense to me once I stopped and thought about it. For example, in the Emily Dickinson poem Perrine presents, the sunset theory has more evidence than the garden theory, and both would have much more evidence than, say, a movie theater theory. The theory with the most evidence is the most correct. That is where my opinion starts to differ from Perrine's. While I agree with his logic, I hold that any theory, so long as it has solid evidence, is at least somewhat valid. It may not be what the author intended, but E.A. Robinson himself  said that "a writer should not be his own interpreter."

I also thought the point Perrine made in the second paragraph was interesting and insightful: "No poet, however, likes to be caught in the predicament of having to explain his own poems." This a completely true statement, and the more ambiguous the writing, the harder it is to explain without setting limitations on its suggestibility (because it is that suggestibility that helps make the poem interesting and exciting for the reader). Perrine goes on to say that "the comments of a critic may raise the curtain on a reader's understanding of a poem, the poet's own comments drop the curtain". When a reader sees other readers' comments on a work, he takes it into consideration in forming his own understanding of that work. On the other hand, when that reader sees the author's comments, he takes those comments as facts and does not use his own thought process. The way I look at it is poets are trying to entertain as well as get a message across. Sometimes, obscuring that message makes the poem entertaining; outright stating the message is not as interesting. I could be totally wrong, but I feel that sometimes a poet is deliberately ambiguous in his writing so as to please a wide audience- thus obtaining more readers. Poets are still people, and people do like getting money. I think Perrine makes a mistake in assuming poetry is perfect- perhaps Dickinson said "sea of daffodil" rather than "seas of daffodils" because it sounded cooler; maybe it had nothing to do with what "daffodil" represents.

But that's just my opinion.

Until Next Time,
Alysse