Writing about poetry can be either fulfilling or disastrous. It's very easy to fall into several horrific trends while writing about a particular poem:
1- Over-analysis, whereby you force absurd meaning and interpretation into every line, giving every comma some metaphoric purpose when its really just a way of separating clauses.
2- Term-collages, whereby you throw out every poetic term you know because either you don't know what to say or you wish to show how many poetry books you've read.
3- Vagueness, whereby you make unqualified remarks about what might be going on in the poem, but by virtue of its being a poem, the symbolism makes it so difficult to make any firm assertions.
Ideally, you need to find a good blend of interpretation, formal analysis, and shameless personal opinion, with a dash of elegance in your writing. This is extremely difficult. It's easy to sound like an idiot when writing about poetry. That's my take on it.
Comments (1)
I laughed when I read this; I think what you say is so funny and so true - sometimes, a comma is just a comma. But I wonder why it is so "easy to sound like an idiot when writing about poetry"? Considering that poetry is an older form (i.e. the form of all the ancient epics - Homer, etc) than prose or plays, what happened to poetry (or to us) that makes it intimidating rather than enjoyable for people today? T.V. couldn't have done that much damage to us, could it? :)
Posted by vitaminc | March 20, 2007 11:49 AM
Posted on March 20, 2007 11:49