11/6 Graduate Presentation in 2020

When we ask the question, “What does a poem mean,” we are not asking a simple question. I believe that the analysis of a poem’s meaning needs to be viewed from three perspectives. Author’s intent, reader response, and meta meaning.

The author's intent cannot be discarded when we consider the meaning of a work.  That having been said, in many cases in poetry, the author's intent is vague (deliberate or otherwise), or the intent is unclear because of a lack of context.  Every poem in the collection A Shropshire Lad adds context to the intent of the poem above.  And every other poem by Housman adds context to A Shropshire Lad.  Yet, by reading seeking to understand, we find a meaning presents itself clearly in isolation, but whose meaning exists not merely in the author's specific writing, but within the meaning created by the work's relation to the author's other works.  These connections deepen the impact of the poem, like a harmonic series to create rich overtones that make the work feel “full”.  Yet, even the lonely blast of a horn can, at times, be more impactful that the rich harmonies of a symphony.

Tolkien says, "I cordially dislike allegory, and have done ever since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other resides in the purposed domination of the author."   And I believe that we can use this as a blueprint for the appreciation of poetry.  Poetry is at its best when its author's intent is aligned with applicability to readers.  If we cannot imagine ourselves as the subject and author of a poem, it is hard to fully realize its impact.  But, very few of us are the subjects of poems, and so there is always a gap between that which the author intended (by a sacred cocktail of consciousness, unconsciousness, and Socrates' “Divine Madness”), and that which the reader perceives.

I believe that the distance between these two interpretations are not inherently dissonant. Instead, I believe that poems, and human experience, are part of a shared humanity. Whether viewed in Jungian or Platonic terms, we are poetry machines. And we are emotional machines. No human being ever had to be taught how to feel, and no culture has ever been instructed that a thing called poetry exists. Just as our minds will develop language given sufficient stimulus, and just as our bones will form human skeletons, our humanity will, by nature of it’s essence, it’s essence in the very Greek sense of the word, seek out poetry and feeling as an essential aspect of the essence of /humanity/.

This harmony between the writer and reader links in with Socrates' “Divine Madness” to form the perfect chord of meaning.  A good poem, a perfect poem, allows us to share our experience with a stranger, and through that shared experience, share our humanity, and by sharing our humanity, to transcend to experience the energies (In a secular Palamist sense) of the essence of /humanity/.  And in that differentiated unity, our hearts achieve, to the extent that it is possible, a kind of unity that they have always longed for.

Socrates' divine madness is not a loss of humanity or reason.  It is the transcendence of reason into the essence of humanity.  As Socrates says in Plato's Apologia, “I realized that it was not by wisdom that poets write their poetry, but by a kind of nature or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets; for these also say many beautiful things, but do not know anything of what they say.”  A brilliant poem, The Iliad, The Mahabharata, or even brilliant poems in miniature, haiku, may be written about and may be discussed and may be shared by many disparate people because the exist in the transcendent realm of essential (Greek again) /humanity/.  And we, in our limited form, each grasp a piece of an infinitely generating fractal  of meaning, but which in and of itself, by itself, infinitely generates meaning as a nature of its own being, which we also share.