Perrine Poetry Blog

    Upon reviewing Perrine's The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry, I reflected upon his assertion that "there are no correct or incorrect readings,"(Perrine) when regarding the interpretation of poetry. Different people have different thoughts on various poetic works, which doesn't mean that their interpretation is correct, but also doesn't mean that it is wrong or too far fetched either. I agree with this. There can be various meanings behind an author's work, and although only one is correct, others might come in the same realm of being close. At times when I have been given a piece of poetry to analyze, I have been clearly off scale in closeness to what the author meant to convey. At other times, I have come up with ideas that make sense in the sense the author wished to portray. What really struck me as interesting in this article was how we will always have to keep guessing on what a poem is supposed to be about. The reasoning for this being that, "No poet, however, likes to be caught in the predicament of having to explain his own poems,"(Perrine).  The article explained my confusion for this statement by justifying that the author, by explaining his poems, would never measure up to the description of the poem itself. Thus, one's questioning and wonderment concerning the poem's topic will always be up for discussion and debate.
    Additionally, a few poems were used as example for poems interpreted wrongly. In this case, sometimes, the most clear message is too thought out creating an elaborate explanation. When breaking down the poem into parts and looking carefully, the meaning of the poem can be much easier to determine. I too agree with this and can relate. I have, when confused with analyzing a poem, looked too closely and come up with an idea that is much more complicated than intended by the author to be. I believe this is where the idea of a "determinable meaning,"(Perrine) comes into place. There is a time when the poem has a deeper more philosophical meaning, and a time when the meaning should be viewed loosely because of it's bluntness. All in all, throughout this article I have agreed with most of Perrine's thoughts and have reflected on many that I have never thought of before.