Hidden meaning

[Stamps]

Hi,

One of my poems has been critiqued in the General C&C Forum and something that was said set me wondering about the meaning that a poem should have. One of the moderators suggested that I bring my query over to this forum.

It often seems to be implied that a poem should have a deeper meaning. Something less than literal. It should be a metaphor for something else. Do any of you feel that should always be the case? Is a poem that is simply descriptive as valid as a poem that has hidden depths?

I can't help thinking of a poem that I *think* was by Robert Louis Stevenson and that *may* have been called "Four Ducks on a Pond". I've never been able to detect any deeper hidden meaning in that - it's just a very simple description of a very simple scene. Yet, I think it is one of the most beautiful poems that I know.

Any thoughts?

[jestshootme]

In school, we read poems and there would be questions that followed. Most of the time they would ask what the poet meant when he wrote "such and such", most often my answers were marked incorrect. I started to develop a more general answer--I don't know what the author meant, I only know what I think he meant..., and I would go on to write my interpretation.

I don't think that poetry needs to have a deep hidden meaning, some of it does, some of it doesn't. Does it matter? A poem can have an underlying message, that doesn't mean that everybody who reads the poem will 'get' that message and the readers who do, will likely have different interpretations of it anyway. I think that the poem just needs to capture the readers' interest, and doesn't necessarily need deeper meaning, however it often makes the poem more interesting.

That's just my opinon--JSM

[Steph#2]

All good descriptive writing makes use of the metaphor as a part of normal and natural communication, there’s nothing “deep” about it. One of the reasons everyone bleats on about the evil cliché is because they are simply overused metaphors that have lost any of the impact they once had. Did you stumble over my use of the word, “bleats”? probably not, but that was a metaphor (not a very original one, admittedly) and it works because it provides a host of inferences that would be too laborious to spell out word-by-word. If the reader feels a sense of inadequacy because they just “don’t get it”, then it can be as much the failing of the author as it is the reader’s inability to understand.

Don’t be a chicken-shit; it’s only a metaphor!

Steph

[Clive2]

People who strain to inject deep "meaning" into their writing usually write shit poems as a result. Someone said a writer should not be too conscious of his intentions, and that is a good thing to bear in mind if you ask me.

Good poems will reveal a host of meanings to all different people. It's not the author's job to prescribe a set-in-stone "meaning".

I hope that helps,

Clive

[Donner]

Excerpts from Understanding Poetry, by Brooks and Warren--

"Poetry as a Way of Saying"

"Poetry, then, is a response to, and an evaluation of, our experience of the objective, bustling world and of our ideas about it. Poetry is concerned with the world as responded to sensorially, emotionally, and intellectually. But--and this fact constitutes another significant characteristic of poetry that cannot be overemphasized--this response always involves all three of these elements: a massive, total response--what we have called earlier the multidimensional quality of experience. As Coleridge put it, poetry 'in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul into activity'...."

"Poetry enables us to know what it 'feels like' to be alive in the world. What does it 'feel like,' for instance, to be in love, to hate somebody, to be conscience-stricken, to watch a sunset or stand by a death-bed, to be willing to die for a cause or live in a passionate devotion to some chosen ideal? Only poetry--in the broadest sense of the word--can help us to answer such questions, and help us, thus, to an understanding of ourselves and of our own values. We may say, in fact, that literature is the most sophisticated example of the process by which we come to grasp our own environment, especially our human environment, with its complex and ambiguous values; you become aware through imaginative enactment and an imaginative logic that all the possibilities of fate are your own, for better or worse. Literature is the most complicated language that man has invented for talking not only to others but to himself; or rather, it is the language he has invented so that he may be himself...."

"Poetry, it is clear, is not cut off from life, but is basically concerned with life--that is, with the lived fullness of the world. It extends our own limited experience by means of imagination. By imagination, it sharpens our sense of the physical world on the one hand, and on the other, it deepens our sense of the emotional, intellectual, and moral implications of human situations and actions. It does not accomplish such things by general description, logical analysis, or abstract reasoning (though it may, as we shall see, involve such activities), but by imaginative enactment, by our sense of "living into" the world portrayed by a poem."

[Ted]

The cynic's argument: Sure, a pig's head sitting atop a sharpened stick can represent many things, but it can also just be a pig's head sitting atop a sharpened stick.

My response: But doesn't that little spark that makes you want to read, write, learn, and imagine also urge you to believe the author's telling you more than just what's on the page? Isn't there something more important, something just below the surface, that the author wants you to think about?

Just a thought.

Ted

[gecian]

I'm a cynic.

[Peter J Ross]

gecian: I'm a cynic.

That makes two of us then.

Yes, X can be a symbol for Y in many complicated ways, but if X isn't interesting in itself, then the Y-symbolism is wasted on a reader who has better things to do than to puzzle over boring stuff on a printed page.

I firmly believe that the secret of success in poetry is to write skilfully about interesting things, and to include ideas in a poem only when the interesting things make the ideas inevitably relevant.

PJR :-)
rant rant rant

[Ted]

Originally posted by Peter J Ross:

I firmly believe that the secret of success in poetry is to write skilfully about interesting things, and to include ideas in a poem only when the interesting things make the ideas inevitably relevant.

PJR :-)
rant rant rant


Well said, Peter. I should have qualified my statement as a matter of why *I* enjoy reading literature.

The four ducks are just sitting there and the wheelbarrow is just a wheelbarrow. Dandy.

Ted

[SomeBodyElse]

Hi Stamps,

In answer to your question, my thought would be that it would depend on what you are writing about and the audience you are writing for. To a greater extent, I guess it also depends on how skilled a writer you are. I know that some of the poetry I have read with a 'deeper meaning' was lost on me until it was explained in full by someone else! I think justshootme hit it on the head when he said that a poem should 'capture the readers' interest'.

-SBE

[Foof]

I second Peter's notion. Another thing to remember is that writing can have many deep layers, but you've got to be able to peel the outer layer of the onion before you get any deeper (and WHEW! you had better be able to write metaphors that aren't as stinky as that). The poem had better work superficially (or aesthetically, you might say) before you go hinting at deeper meanings that less sophisticated readers might not get. Think of Eliot's The Wasteland, for example.

Foof

[Dunc]

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing:
What a little thing
To remember for years,
To remember with tears!

This, of course, describes the four companies of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. The grass bank is the valley down which they charged, the white clouds are the artillery smoke. At a deeper level, it represents mortality and loss, the inner nature of sunt lacrimae rerum, and thus all humankind.

I thought everyone knew that. Regards / Dunc

[Ted]

I get the distinct impression you're making fun of me.
I'm so offended I might
I might
I might just sit here and be offended.

Ted
or not