11-16-2017, 04:15 AM
Pfft. If we only read for literal meaning, we're not reading poetry at all, just really long and tedious bumper stickers -- so of course it's about shades of figurative possibility. I thought that went without saying, since the bumper sticker kind of writer never stays around here when they find out we're not fooled by the shiny oil slick into thinking that there's depth in the puddle.
Lizzie is correct in that there must be a tension between writer and reader, with the text in the middle -- it is a conversation that, outside of a forum like this one, the text should be having on its own without the writer holding its hand. There is conflict too often on the site because writers forget that they're going to have to give up the helicopter at some point if they want their little childers to survive out in the big bad world -- and if they've no intention of letting go of them, why bother writing and posting in the first place? Just do a Youtube tutorial on contouring or something else that gets you adoration from people who don't really mean it.
And nibbed is spot on -- we can ask about intent if we want, because there's someone there to answer (who may not choose to, of course). And if we don't care about the intent (personally, I'm with the post-structuralists on that one in that writers will always reinvent their history or purpose to the point where it's unreliable and only the text is authentic), what's wrong with critiquing other aspects? Many a poem has been made or broken by a line break, meter or punctuation choices.
Lizzie is correct in that there must be a tension between writer and reader, with the text in the middle -- it is a conversation that, outside of a forum like this one, the text should be having on its own without the writer holding its hand. There is conflict too often on the site because writers forget that they're going to have to give up the helicopter at some point if they want their little childers to survive out in the big bad world -- and if they've no intention of letting go of them, why bother writing and posting in the first place? Just do a Youtube tutorial on contouring or something else that gets you adoration from people who don't really mean it.
And nibbed is spot on -- we can ask about intent if we want, because there's someone there to answer (who may not choose to, of course). And if we don't care about the intent (personally, I'm with the post-structuralists on that one in that writers will always reinvent their history or purpose to the point where it's unreliable and only the text is authentic), what's wrong with critiquing other aspects? Many a poem has been made or broken by a line break, meter or punctuation choices.
It could be worse