The meaning of the poem ???

I'm no expert. But I have an opinion. I believe that the best poetry touches us in ways we understand. That it brings out some deep shared moment of understanding. I think the next category of "near great poems" touches us in ways we can't normally find words to express just how it touched us. That the balance of images and sounds come to us and moves us in some way we find inexpressible.

This is why if I don't get a poem, but find it moving, I will usually say something like, "I'm not sure you have to always understand a poem to get a poem." Now, that also is my opinion. There are many here who disagree with me. There may be some that agree with me. I don't think the meaning is always clear in what I write, but that doesn't bother me as much as does some.

Am I right? Am I wrong? I don't know, but it is how I feel about the subject and I must have picked that up from somewhere in my varied academic career--and likely early on.

Both the listeners, and Thomas's work have meaning. Probably Thomas's his most famous words are from "Do not Go Gentle Into The Good Night"

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The critic here is offered a plethora of thematic material by just this final verse alone. To say that his poems lack meaning is another way of saying your reading lacks the ability to discern meaning, or you are unable to find meaning within the work, based on your empiricistic knowledge of the world.


The Listeners is open to many interpretations. Though the exact intention of the work can never truly be discerned, there still within it contains a vast amount of possible interpretations, each fecund in meaning.

Write it, then decide.

Steppe said:

Does a poem have to have an over all meaning that is contained within itself ?

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No. A poem can be a simple collection of sounds pleasing to the poet's sensibilities.

I'm thinking of Walter De La Mare's "The Listeners" as an example.

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Ahh, yes. (cracks knuckles) On this, I can speak.

The canonical "meaning" of the poem is missed opportunity. The traveller could have accomplished something, had he arrived earlier, but now the chance is past - there is nothing to be done. Most serious students of poetry - by which I mean ivory-tower students, not frequent-reader students, with no value judgement made on either - agree that this is the meaning.

However, I've always thought it reasonably clear that "sleep" in this piece is a metaphor for death... which alters the probable meaning. There is one man left awake in the house. He makes no response, in all likelihood, because he is dying. And since the listeners are thronging the stair, the image this paints in my mind is one of a house littered with the dead; one man, alone, dying, amidst the corpses of those who were no doubt his friends, his family.

From this, we can fill in a lot of blanks. The traveller brings a message to the battle front, as he promised, but the front has moved on; the battle is over; the troops for whom his message was intended are dead, save one left alive but dying. They make no response, because there is none to be made. Perceiving this, he takes his leave, his word kept though no message delivered.

So I go from a very vague and generic concept of "lost opportunity" to a very specific meaning indeed, entirely on the strength of how I interpret the word "awake".

I've also never found Dylan Thomas to be in any way confusing. Is there some specific piece that confuses you?

To me, the fascinating thing about some poetry is that it isn't meant to be so straightforward as prose. In that type of poem, the meaning is masked like a riddle and meant to make the reader ponder, not simply read. Others might argue, but I also like a poem that can be interpreted in more ways than one. As with the above poem, The Listeners, it could be argued that the traveler is one who also came to the doorway of death, but then turned around. As you read, in every line you feel foreboding and shadows. So saying, if I read this in another ten years, I might garner even greater meaning from the words. To me, this is what puts some work over the top and perhaps leads to confusion, when a poem can adapt itself to different readers in interesting ways.

Walter de la Mare worked as a bored accountant, as you may know, and most of his work suggests a sort of mystical travel, escapism. "The Listeners" is another of the travel oriented poems, landing somewhere between reality and a sort of shadow world. In this particular poem, a knight (apparently) knocks on the door of a cottage, to fulfill a promise. No answer. But something heard him. Phantoms, shadows of the people who once lived there. He knocks again, but realizes that the people who sought his promise are no longer there. Are they alive? Probably not. Remember the phantoms and the eerie silence. He shouts in vain, already aware of their absence, and says, "tell them I came" (or something to that effect). His promise fulfilled too late, and only the silence rushes in to fill the void.

Dylan Thomas, on the other hand, becomes the narrator in most of his work, the poems that relate to his aunty's farm and in "Do Not Go Gentle," which is essentially a son raging at his father, begging him to fight for his life. The poem, written while Thomas's father lay on his death bed, is certainly as much about staying alive as it is about giving into death. It has meaning, as does all of Thomas's works.

Does a poem necessarily have to have some profound meaning? Probably not. Like "The Listeners," one in a long line of Mare's work at escaping his drudgery, a poem can be a story, something simple, something magical. A poem can be a snapshot, giving the view as it appeared only for a second. I do believe a poem must have purpose, either to reveal and expose, to share, or simply to tell the part of a magical adventure like the adventure in the above piece.

As for "you" the Poet, meaning is implied by the simple fact of pen to paper or finger to key as it were. Even if jibberish, or unconnected stream of thought is the outcome, "you", for all intents and purposes, had a reason behind writing whatever you wrote. Even if it was merely to clear your mind.

I don't think anything can be created without meaning. I do think things can be created that you or others don't care about, but that is different. And, ultimately, "MEANING" will be different for eveyone on any given piece, from the author to each one who reads that which is written.

Setting out to write a piece without meaning in itself gives the piece meaning and intent. You are writing something that purposes to have no meaning and others will invariably find meaning in that as perhaps, some intriguing experiment or simply apply a meaning of their own.

So, no. You can't create something without meaning.

Unless of course you're like me and feel that most of your life is pointless, without meaning or purpose.

I've always found it particularly important for a poet to recognise that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a reader getting something entirely unintended from his work, while completely missing the point the poet was trying to get across.

Once the work goes down on paper, it's not wholly yours anymore. You may have certain rights to the words you wrote, but the reader retains exclusive rights to what he thinks about them.

As a child, I used to love a song by Styx called "I'm OK". It reassured me, as I travelled the world and was always the new kid, the weird kid, the one getting ridiculed and harassed and beaten up. But this song spoke to me, saying it was just fine to be different. "I'm OK this way, yes I'm OK."

And one day, in a shocking moment of clarity, I realised the song was really Dennis de Young's defiant fist-shaking anthem of uncloseted homosexuality. Not exactly what I was trying to communicate.

So it's not something I call "my theme song" anymore. But I loved that song, and still do, and it's on my Zune where I can listen to it whenever I want. Because no matter what Dennis meant when he sang it, I know what I feel when I hear it, and that's what's important.

One must remember that the purpose of Poetry is to COMMUNICATE and that implies some kind of substance, whether that is emotion, reflective thought, personal or observed experience, or perceived insights, and it also implies that such will be presented in such a way that the reader can derive some MEANING in what is presented, (whether it was what the Poet originally intended or not).

Which is NOT to say that a writer's INTENT or PURPOSE constitutes "MEANING" in and of itself, because such is "meaningless" unless it is COMMUNICATED.

Better Poetry will almost always have multiple levels of meaning, most of which are intentional but some of which were implied subconsciously in the images selected and in connotations related to certain words or phrasing, although many of those meanings, because of their subtlety may not be readily apparent to the "casual" reader, and that's fine because as long as ANY meaning is communicated, the poem may be considered successful. although it is the multiple meanings, when perceived, that give a poem it's depth, and make it more memorable.

Browning is once said to have commented that anyone was entitled to any meaning they could get from one of his Poems as long as they could defend it within the CONTEXT of the Poem, and I pretty much go along with that.

Just a thought.

Jim Hoye, (JRH)

Steppe,

The simple answer is that obscurity exists any time the reader lacks the knowledge or understanding to relate to what the Poet is saying and that can happen at anytime, but the key is whether such was intentional or not and whether such knowledge or understanding is, in fact, accessible to the reader with a minimum of effort.

Few, if any, could relate to Eliot's allusions in "Prufrock" without an extensive knowledge of literature or a willingness to search such out, but they could, in fact, be accessed.

When a poet cites personal insights or experience without giving readers sufficient clues to help them relate such to their own experience, or cites obscure knowledge or references that the average person would not have access to, he is being "intentionally" obscure, whatever his purpose, and that is counterproductive to any intent to COMMUNICATE.

Does the presence of such preclude gaining meaning from a Poem? It depends on how extensive it is and how crucial it is to the overall meaning and intent, but it does, in any case, represent POOR CRAFTSMANSHIP, as anything that does not contribute to the whole can only make any overall meaning harder to discern.

"INTENTIONAL OBSCURITY" is the refuge of INCOMPETANCE.

Clarity of expression need not, and, in good Poetry, does not, limit the meaning that can be conveyed because a poet has many tools from metaphore and similie to allusion, inference, and connotation that can allow multiple interpretations while still remaining PERFECTLY clear, (at least on one level), and that is one of the elements that most distinquishes Poetry from Prose.

Hope this answers your questions.

Jim Hoye, (JRH)

KTC said:

Intentional obscurity alienates and infuriates most readers. But, yeah... I expect different people to see different meanings in poetry. We all arrive at a poem with a different life story behind us. What we carry to the poem's arrival is going to have an effect on the reading. But like I said up thread, write it. It will mean what it means. That's the wonderful thing about people... we all arrive everywhere from different paths. A poem has various paths...it is up to the reader to take one.

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I agree. The "meaning" of a poem is relative to the life experience of the reader. We understand based on what we know, and we know based on that life experience. In some rare cases, I've found that a poem can allow a reader to expand their life experience and their understanding when the author of the piece somehow gives over their own personal experience. I once read the first in the series of five poems about my daughter's death to a poetry class. Most of the audience were very young people who had never had children. The room fell silent, and when I looked up, several audience members were crying. I think that's when I realized how very powerful a poem can be. I take no credit for what happened, but somehow, in that particular piece, I had allowed the audience to "feel" my grief. I've had the experience when reading other work by far more talented writers. Dylan Thomas gave it to me in "Do Not Go Gentle". Has anyone else had this experience.