(no subject)

[novapsyche]

People are starting to look at me rather oddly when I tell them that I enjoy the heat. This summer looks to be quite the scorcher, though. I was watching the weather on some cable channel yesterday and was stunned to see how widespread the heatwave is. And we in the upper Midwest are not to see any relief until next Wednesday. My heart goes out to those trapped in the mountain zones.

I went to the poetry meeting at Barnes & Noble last night, and man was I nitpicky about grammar. I was almost embarrassing myself. I challenged someone's piece as to whether it qualified as poetry (seemed more like prose to me), but I eventually tempered my criticism. People there generally seemed to like "That's What It's Like," even if they didn't know that there was a subtext (it's rather obscure, I realize--I was interested to see if the poem succeeded without that subtext being consciously noticed).

I finally distilled part of my poetic philosophy into one neat sentence: The reader's interpretation is more important than [the writer's] intention. I've held this view for about three years now, and it has been only since then that I've started writing poetry seriously.

Comments

[prema.livejournal.com]

I think my philosophy would then be the exact opposite :) The poet's intention is more important than the reader's interpretation.

The poet (in my opinion) writes not to be read, but to express an idea, to satisfy the urge of a muse. The sentiment expressed is not lost if it is never found, it just remains uncovered but there. But the wrong interpretation of a poem (wrong being the direct contrary intent of poet) would lead to misconceptions about the poet's background, ideas and defeat the purpose of expression altogether. That's my take though. I would rather no one got my poetry, rather than it be read and misconstrued to mean something it's not. I'm often tempted to provide my personal interpretation on something I write - extrapolation from that at least would be reasonably accurate.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

If your readers consistently misinterpret your writing, perhaps you're not expressing what you think you're expressing very clearly. There's a difference between "writing for yourself" and writing for an audience. In the second case, if you don't care whether your audience understands your intention, that's a problem, in my opinion.

[jennkitty.livejournal.com]

i write for myself. so i guess i'm not a serious poet. but the catharsis is all the gratification i need.