01-16-2012, 10:48 AM
(01-16-2012, 10:18 AM)Leanne Wrote: Showing and telling are maybe part of it, but not entirely. "Telling" might well be a tool used by people who are also employing irony or some other subtlety.
For example, you can write an entire poem that seems very obvious in its literal meaning, all the while having a subtext going on that is acting in a completely different way. These are the "deceptively simple" things that we keep talking about, that get written off by people who assume that "obvious" means "only". The subtext may only work on people whose experience or knowledge set allows them into it, but it's a mistake to assume that there's nothing else happening just because we can't immediately see it. Of course, in some things there is nothing else happening
Leaving aside my own simplistic nature, your last line is itself a little conundrum. If at first we understand the plain meaning, and then, if we have that special ability, perceive that there is more, a different meaning to be extracted, at what point do we throw in the towel, and decide there are no further meanings? When boredom strikes? When Nature calls?
I do not in truth eschew the idea of subtexts and so on, yet one does wonder: someone wishes to say two things, one patently. But why sneak in the other latently? Why not write two separate poems?
