07-19-2016, 01:12 PM
"Here's my question: how would we go about offering a critique on a piece whose "meaning" eludes us or if we don't know what the author is on about? Does author intent matter when it comes to critique? What about critiquing surrealist poetry – how would you judge whether that kind of poem is successful?"
If nothing comes to us, then plainly, we don't. We admit we are defeated, and move on -- if the author responds, then maybe we return, but otherwise...
The author's intent is key, but not exclusively. I think a good work is layered -- it speaks for itself, so that even its author ends up being only one pair of eyes. Although, and I suppose especially for confessional stuff, what a pair of eyes they have to be!
I think surrealism is meant to give the audience alternate, perhaps even clearer, ways of viewing things. If a surrealist piece has no effect on you, at its most basic a visceral "what the fuck?" moment, but at its best a whole "my way of thinking has been forever expanded", then the piece has failed. They're not really meant to be treated as puzzles -- to treat them as such is the work of the critic, but only when the critic needs something to sell -- but they must end up creating some, in the audience's mind, if they are to be any good.
And ultimately, there are many levels of understanding, not only in poetry, but I guess in life. I sorta agree with that old saying, that art is an imitation of life, but it sort of runs deeper than art having to be all realistic and jizz -- art ultimately has to reveal certain sides in life the audience rarely, if ever, considers. And that revelation doesn't imply a reception of answers, just as God didn't really give Job or Saint John (not the Evangelist necessarily, but the one who wrote Revelation) any answers -- usually, if not constructed as a joke or some sort of scientific explanation, I think any interpretation of a poem that renders only answers is a failure -- but a reception of questions much better said than philosophy, yet much less painful than experience.
If nothing comes to us, then plainly, we don't. We admit we are defeated, and move on -- if the author responds, then maybe we return, but otherwise...
The author's intent is key, but not exclusively. I think a good work is layered -- it speaks for itself, so that even its author ends up being only one pair of eyes. Although, and I suppose especially for confessional stuff, what a pair of eyes they have to be!
I think surrealism is meant to give the audience alternate, perhaps even clearer, ways of viewing things. If a surrealist piece has no effect on you, at its most basic a visceral "what the fuck?" moment, but at its best a whole "my way of thinking has been forever expanded", then the piece has failed. They're not really meant to be treated as puzzles -- to treat them as such is the work of the critic, but only when the critic needs something to sell -- but they must end up creating some, in the audience's mind, if they are to be any good.
And ultimately, there are many levels of understanding, not only in poetry, but I guess in life. I sorta agree with that old saying, that art is an imitation of life, but it sort of runs deeper than art having to be all realistic and jizz -- art ultimately has to reveal certain sides in life the audience rarely, if ever, considers. And that revelation doesn't imply a reception of answers, just as God didn't really give Job or Saint John (not the Evangelist necessarily, but the one who wrote Revelation) any answers -- usually, if not constructed as a joke or some sort of scientific explanation, I think any interpretation of a poem that renders only answers is a failure -- but a reception of questions much better said than philosophy, yet much less painful than experience.