Perrine Poetry Blog

Before reading this essay, I had the typical view of poetry analysis. I thought that poetry means whatever you as an individual want it to mean (within reason), so different types of people could potentially see different meanings for the same poem. While reading the beginning of this essay, I had the impression that Perrine was narrow-minded in his methods to poetry interpretation. His chosen diction (critical commonplace and critical heresy) in the second paragraph may cause readers to take offense. But after reading Perrine's essay, I now understand poetry and its meanings in a new way. One of Perrine's ideas that struck me and opened up my mind was his opinion on symbols. Perrine states that "the cone of light is the area of meaning". This metaphor and vidual picture definitely made sense to me. It showed me that there may be multiple interpretations of an idea, but some interpretations are more correct and closer to the point of the cone than others. I think that this view of literary analysis can allow me to be less intimidated by poetry units this year in class.
Although there were multiple methods of ideas introduced by Perrine that I agreed with and liked, there were a few strategies and concepts in his piece that I did not agree with. The one idea that bothered me the most and stood out to me was his criteria used for judging an interpretation of a poem. I hated the fact that two answers can be correct. What also irritates me is that one answer is more correct than the other. If they are both correct in some way, then how can one be superior to another. That concept is really hard for me to grasp, understand, and apply. If poetry is going to be this way, as well as other tests, how can I learn to tell which interpretation or answer is more correct? I don't recall Perrine going into depth or explanation of how to do this. If our class is going to be working with poetry for the remainder of the first quarter, than I want to be able to better understand and utlilize this concept that Perrine introduces in his essay.