Perrine Poetry Blog

While reading Perrine's "The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry," I found points that I agree with but also some ideas that I disagree with. I agree with his idea at the end of the first paragraph that states "there are no correct or incorrect readings: there are only readings which differ more or less widely from a statistical norm." I believe that poetry can be interpreted a numerous amount of ways, and many of them can be correct. Perrine also lists two determining factors for a correct judgment of a poem that I agree with. "Be[ing] able to account... for any detail," and "[relying] on the fewest assumptions," is a good way to determine the meaning of a poem. The poem was not written with any unimportant details, so each one must be accounted for, which made a lot of sense to me while I was reading Perrine's article. I do disagree, however, with the author's idea that if a poet must explain his poem, he has failed. A poem is a poem and if it has meaning, it has meaning. Just because the author has had to explain it to someone does not diminish the poem's true meaning and value. I do not see what one has to do with the other.

After reading the article I was at first proud of myself for interpreting Emily Dickinson's poem close to the way that Perrine did. I determined that the poem was about the sunset, however I took "ships" as having a literal meaning while Perrine said that they were actually clouds. What I found most shocking though was when the author stated that "Whitman's [poem] is literal, Melville's [is] metaphorical. Whitman's is about an army corps on the march, Melville's is about the stars." I am not sure that I even believe that Melville's was about the stars. Of all the things you could compare stars to, why would someone choose to use an army corps? The only words that insinuate stars are the adjectives "bright," "shining," etc. But these terms can describe more than stars. I felt the poem was written by someone who admired the army and was seeing their grandeur. I feel that makes much more sense. I also found it hard to believe that Blake's poem was literally about a rose and a worm. The word choice suggests so much more and I just don't get why someone would write a poem about a worm and a rose without having another underlying meaning. I also do not understand how Perrine comes to determine this about Blake's poem. How does he know that the poem has literal meaning?