Perrine Poetry Blog Entry

 This article gave me a headache. I had a difficult time reading it and understanding what Perrine was saying. From the first read I got that you asked us to interpret the meaning of a poem where almost all of us were incorrect because the "garden"  theme didn't account for all of the details in the poem (the Wharf). Also, no one was even close to understanding the war poems where one was actually about the stars. And finally, where we were asked to interpret the meaning of a rose and a worm that were actually meant to really be a rose and a worm. It seems we were incorrect in all aspects of our poem interpreting, according to Perrine. I understand where he is coming from in showing proof of his interpretations. They had good evidence behind them and I just had no idea that those poems could mean anything else than what we had, as a class, written on the board.

 I do agree with Perrine in the fact that there should be a right and wrong meaning to poems. I mean, they can't absolutely mean anything someone wants it to me. The poem would be useless if this were the case. There would basically be no meaning for poems if the author of them never even had an idea in mind as he was writing. If the author was just putting words on a paper then they did a pretty good job, but I doubt that's what any poem writer does. I believe there is some real meaning behind what they're writing and there is some interpretation or message they wish for the reader to get out of reading it. He did provide ample proof for his two criteria of the interpretation accounting for every detail in the poem (Wharf) and the interpretation which relies on the fewest assumptions not grounded in the poem itself (Melville's stars). And, after reading this article I can definitely see where he is coming from and when re-reading the poems completely understand these interpretations.