Week of 3/31: Double Meanings in Poetry

This week, we dove deep into poetry and tried to analyze the intent and the message of different poems. As the discussion progressed, we were able to come up with several plausible explanations as to what each of the poems meant (thanks to Lillie). This struck me as interesting, because when the poem was written, its author probably had only one meaning in mind. We could be interpreting the poem in a way that the poet him/herself never even thought of. It is extremely interesting to me that we can look at a poem and simply create our own story around the way we interpret it, and then connect our narrative to history and argue why our interpretation of the poem "works". Ultimately, this is the beauty of poetry, and of creative writing in general - it can take on many different perspectives based on the "lens" through which it is interpreted.

Comments

  1. Ben KaczmarApril 1, 2022 at 8:26 PM

    Good evening, Seth! I found our discussions on poetry to be very insightful and helpful for our critical thinking skills. At the first time of reading, the context of the poems wasn't stated revealed in. For myself, I did a little bit of research just to familiarize myself about the poems before class. I found that learning about the authors a little beforehand helped me understand the meanings behind the poems. Our class discussions then helped further develop my thoughts, which helped me and everyone else with our interpretations.

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  2. Professor StarkApril 6, 2022 at 12:57 PM

    Thank you, Seth, for the blog. I am glad you enjoyed reading Guillen, You are probably right that Guillen may not have intended for us to interpret the ocean in the way some members of the class did. The beauty of poetry is that it can mean different things to us - one person reads it one way and another differently.

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