A friend of mine, a poet, and someone who attends the WWP regularly, received two contradictory bits of feedback. An editor told him that his poems were well made, but they needed to mean more, and a professor told him that the editor was full of crap, that poems don’t mean anything. He asked me what I thought. So here’s me diving into the pool, based on the philosopher Susanne Langer – someone poet Steven Dobyns encourages all poets to read.
By the way, I’m talking about lyric poetry – just thought you ought to know.
Audiences, readers, who engage in a dialogue with “art” – i.e. with “made things” that are created purely for the purpose of engaging human sensibilities, are doing so for a specific reason. They’re doing so in order to have an “experience” that must in some way be different from what they would get out of having other experiences, like, there must be some difference between engaging with a still life painting and looking at the bowl of fruit and bottle of wine on the table; between reading brief instructions on how to set the date and time on the plasma television and reading a lyrical poem about setting the date and time on the plasma television. If there’s no difference in the experience, then there are other things we could be doing than writing/reading poems. I hope you’re with me so far.
So if we’re seeking a particular kind of “experience,” then you could ask, “what kind of experience are we seeking?” And you could ask, “how good is this particular poem at giving us the experience we seek?”
I think the bottom line for lyric poetry is that it is an intensification of experience. And when the reader engages with that intensification, then the reader is potentially enlarged, at least for the moment, maybe longer, through that poem’s potential to transform experience.
Many things can be beautiful and well-made – assembly language code, an exceptionally well-done job of installing a sheet-rock wall, a pot turned on a wheel, and we can even enjoy them as exceptional examples of their craft, even put them in a museum as examples of “found art” (objets trouvé), but in general we don’t grant to their making the purpose of bringing us to transcendence like we do when crafting art or partaking in it.
Speaking personally, if I, as a poet, am asked to choose between two values: a) my poems mean nothing, and b) my poems mean something, I choose “b” (postmodern philosophy, cynicism, deconstructivist philosophy, and a poet’s tendency to be self-denigrating about the place of poetry, aside).
I, too, agree with Rachel Short. Meanings are subjective. It’s fairly elitist to insist that a poem “mean more”. What does that mean? Mean more to who? The elitist reading the poem? That is very subjective. Is Frost Road Not Taken any less a poem if just read on literal level? The literal meaning of this poem by Robert Frost is pretty obvious. A traveler comes to a fork in the road and needs to decide which way to go to continue his journey. After much mental debate, the traveler picks the road “less traveled by.” But the deeper meaning is not too deep. The poem describes the tough choices of people traveling the road of life. The traveler regrets leaving the possibilities of the road not chosen behind. I read somewhere Frost wrote a stanza and then didn’t add the rest of the poem for 3 or more years, and that he wrote it for a friend who would never be the same after exposure to horrors of war. But that’s it. And the meaning is pretty obvious. The poem does not rise to anything loftier. But – to me – what makes the poem great is not the meaning Frost intended but the literary devices he used and the poetry and art of the work – the very thing that Michael denigrates when he says “in general we don’t grant to their making the purpose of bringing us to transcendence”. I think the Frost poem is so skillfully crafted that the craft and beauty of the words do bring us to transcendence. Now, there is a difference between just describing a pretty scene – even doing it well – and a good or great poem. So without specific examples it’s hard to judge what was deemed well made yet still found lacking. Care you to cite a specific poem of your student for our observations?
I appreciate your comment, but just want to say I did not denigrate anything in my article.
I don’t think Michael was ‘denigrating’. Just pointing out ways to improve poems by creating work that has a higher purpose/ loftier goals. Elaborating on the points made by the editor. Counter point is from Rachel – just because a poem did not have meaning for one person doesn’t indicate that said poem lacks meaning for all. Or that a well crafted poem that is a precise and exacting study of a particular event/time/situation CAN bring one to transcendence without the poem having a higher purpose. Chan noted that the Frost poem is well crafted and can bring one to transcendence without searching for deeper meaning. Fred Smock encourages his students to just use their every day experiences as subjects in poems, and indeed many of his poems – again IMHO – bring one to transcendence without the need for deep meaning and lofty goals (ex: Blue Hour by Fred Smock). Here is a poem by Jim Harms that IMHO is a model for a precise and exacting study that brings me to transcendence without having much more meaning. What do you think?
A magnifying glass, two poker chips
and a plastic dinosaur in his pocket, Walt
falls asleep mid-chew, leaves the rest
of his bologna to the charity of winter,
its thrifty hours south of noon.
Carnations the color of plums, the daisies
gone first, petals floating in a vase.
February in West Virginia, sunlight
through windows buttering
the pine floors, a basket of warm clothes
to fold, Phoebe naming them: blue sock,
pretty dress, blue sock, every shirt a sort of
hat. At five o’clock the postman rings to let us
know he’s late. And the light seems to sizzle
as it settles into shadows, at the edges of which
something moves. Something always moves.
Now – I am having some success getting poems published in some on-line literary jornals, but my poems are not making the cut in printed journals. I’m searching for how to take that next step, and with the help of Michael and others I hope to get there. This is an interesting topic of discussion because Michael and the editor both came to similar conclusions but independent of each other, while Harms and even Smock would lead me a different way.
Beautifully said, as always Rachel. The dude said more, and I’m not exactly being fair – he said: “poem’s ‘higher purpose’ is that it exists. We make art despite the higher purposes raining down upon us, not to extol them.”
And I agree with him – the meaning of the poem is the poem – that’s my new motto.
It’s possible that the professor who stated that “poems don’t mean crap” meant as such that the meanings of poems are subjective. As for the editor, just because those poems did not have meaning for them doesn’t indicate that said poems are lack of meaning for all. Do these poems have meaning for the poet? If the poet finds void of meaning in the poems, he may just be scratching the surface of a particular topic. I have found the meaning of poems can be buried several drafts deep or it takes an entire collection of poems working as one to shed some light. One can’t extract a pixel from a picture and make out the subject.