Hi Nels.
I think I’m going to have to disagree with you that I’ve proven the refutation of my argument. I disagree with your premise that what I’ve produced is a “good†poem. It simply isn’t. Now, Daybreak put a title to it (“Wisdomâ€) and started a thread here under that name trying to show why he, too, thought it was good. He actually put forth quite an impressive interpretation of it. The problem, as I told him, is that the interpretation says nothing about the poem or the poet, but everything about the one doing the interpreting. The Underground Man made a similar argument to Daybreak’s about the Williams poem under yet another thread (this discussion has now crossed three threads) and maybe I can use this opportunity to elaborate on what I told him.
Williams’ poem relates some bare facts (not unlike my “Wisdomâ€), specifically about the fate of some plums. This is all that it does. It suggests nothing. Yes, it can be interpreted, but so then can a simple news article from page eight of the Wall Street Journal. Does this make the writer of the news story a poet? Is his news report a “poem†merely because it causes a reader to think something more profound than what was intended?
In my estimation, a poem ought to suggest something, ought to hint at a deeper meaning. It is, I think, the poet’s job to take us by the hand and, as an example, show us something extraordinary in the mundane, to act as intermediary between something he has described, and the meaning behind the description, to walk us up to something significant and show it to us, all the while allowing us to reach our own conclusions by breathing just enough life into the subject matter to make us care, and make us want to take a deeper look. We relate in some way to the poem not by accident (because, perhaps, we had a coincidental “plum†incident of our own one time, only with peaches) but because the poet has found a way to open our minds a bit.
Now, if the Williams poem has done this for somebody (and I repost it below in its entirety just in case anybody has forgotten it) then I can’t argue with them. I would, however, suggest that William Carlos Williams, being a well-respected poet, was given just a bit of slack on this one by posterity. He must’ve meant something, I can imagine the train of thought going. He’s a great poet after all! And so we scramble to find meaning when, in reality, none was offered.
==================================
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
–William Carlos Williams
