Interpreting Traditional Poetry

It is often stated that a poem means something different to every different reader.

I would like to challenge that understanding of poetry. Poetry can be considered as one of the most, perhaps the most, specific of all forms of expression.

This makes a lot of sense if you consider the following: a poet is an expert with words, so why would he/she write something purposely vague? A poet takes a lot of time and labour to compose a poem. Why go to all that trouble unless you really have something to say? As the poet Robert Graves puts it: "Must I drive the pen until blood bursts from my nails / And my breath fails, and I shake with fever." Why is he working so hard unless he has a very specific meaning that he wants to capture in the poem?

There is another example of the specific nature of poetry, a poem called "To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence," by James Elroy Flecker. The first stanza shows his desire to connect with you, the reader:

                      I who am dead a thousand years,
                      And wrote this sweet archaic song,
                      Send you my words as messengers,
                      The way I shall not pass along.

This poet is writing to send us his thoughts and experiences. He therefore wants to express himself as specifically as he can. He tells us what he values in life:

                      I care not if you bridge the seas,
                      Or ride secure the cruel skies,
                      Or build consummate palacies,
                      Of metal or of masonry.

                      But have you wine, and music still?
                      And statues, and a bright-eyed love?
                      And ideal thoughts of Good and Ill?
                      And prayers to Him who sits above?

                      How shall we conquer? Like a wind
                      At eve our fancies blow
                      And old Maeonides the blind Said it,
                      Three thousand years ago

He actually refers to us as his friend:

                      O Friend! Unseen, unborn, unknown,
                      Student of our sweet English tongue,
                      Read out my words at night, alone,
                      I was a poet, I was young.

Finally, he reveals his actual purpose for writing the poem. And that purpose is to connect with us, the readers, in a profound and personal way:

                      Since I can never see your face,
                      And never take you by the hand,
                      I send my words through time and space
                      To greet you. You will understand.

The words of Flecker tell us that a poet does care whether or not people understand him specifically, and that a poem does express one specific idea. It is important to poets to be read and understood.

There is a modern poet named Judith Wright who also speaks of the desire to use poetry as a form of true language. Tellingly, she calls it "For Precision," and is referring to the precision of poetic speech. She says that most of our efforts to communicate are inadequate. Only poetry can cut "through the confusions of foggy talk" and speak "with a pure voice." A successful poem "joins all, gives all meaning, makes all whole."

These poets contradict the idea that a poem is open to a different interpretation by every different reader. They see poetry as one of the most specific, if not thee most specific, forms of language.

Now, none of the above explanation deals with how difficult poetry can be, and how vague it often does seem. Poetry is definitely a challenging and difficult thing to understand, but that does not mean that it is ultimately vague. Once you break through the shell, the shell of difficult and unfamiliar language, which surrounds a poem, you quickly see that it is in fact very specific.

One way to understand a poem is to classify the topic with other poems. Almost every poem, deals with a topic that many poems have dealt with before. It helps the interpretation if you can connect a poem to topics such as: utopias, retrospectives, lovers, a sense of freedom…. Most poems, perhaps every poem, fit into a general category of poetry.

Hence, there is a universality to poetry. A poem captures universal human experiences and situations, situations that we all understand. So if you look at poetry as a whole, it is like a mirror of the world as we humans experience it. Far from being vague, the hopes, dreams, fears and desires of humanity are captured in the great book of poetry.