This is a question that I think about from time to time. It probably first occurred to me in my good old middle school days (note: sarcasm, they were not good). We were asked to analyse and annotate a poem, an all too common task in most English classrooms. To be honest here, I actually quite enjoyed it. I was a nerd, and still am for the most part. I enjoyed learning about the various literary devices. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, enjambement and all these other fancy-sounding terms were apparently used masterfully by the poet to convey a specific message.
I find myself using this technique of analysis to this day. Whenever I read poetry or prose, I tend to subconsciously look for some literary technique that could have been cleverly used by the wordsmith to make me feel a certain way about the piece. I have, however, always had my doubts about whether there is any point to this. Realistically, there is no way to be 100% certain about what the author really meant unless they tell you themselves. There's that once-famous meme about the author's blue curtains that I'm sure you've come across at some point. Was the author's choice of blue curtains arbitrary? Or was it a deliberate attempt to reflect the character's sadness and create a gloomy atmosphere? Who knows, really.
I remember quite a few times discussing poems with a fellow poetry enthusiast, and disagreeing on the meaning or the tone of certain words. Similarly, on several occasions, I've shown friends and family members works of my own, and most had somewhat different interpretations of the piece than what I had intended. It's interesting because it always makes me think, does it really matter at all? So what if the way I interpret a novel is different from the way you or someone else interprets it? If I enjoy that novel through my interpretation and my perspective of it, then surely that's all that matters?
All of this discussion reminds of a quote by the prolific American poet Carl Sandburg:
"I've written some poetry I don't understand myself."
I don't think I've ever related to a quote more than I have with this one. It is insane the number of times where I'll be feeling something very intensely but very vaguely, almost like an amorphous blob of emotion. I'll then write a poem in an attempt to consolidate those feelings. In the end, I have a piece of poetry that seems just as amorphous and vague as my blob of emotion in the first place. I have so many old poems I wrote in my teen years, especially, that when I read now just make no sense at all.
My question is to my fellow poets here, have you ever experienced this? Have you ever written something and found yourself entirely unsure of its meaning? Do let me know in the comments, I always find this a rather fascinating topic for discussion!
© 2021 Shreya Alagramam
