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"I don't quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I'm not quite sure. I don't want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience."
--John Ashbery
The above quote started me thinking about a long-time problem that has bugged me again and again, seemingly without end. The problem is that I become irritated when I read a poem that just seems to have no meaning. If I can't understand it, even though I might feel some slight emotional twinge or two, I still experience a vexatious sense of vague inadequacy; if I cannot understand the wording in a bit of text, whether from prose or poetry, then it seems to me that either the poet or the reader (me) has somehow failed. Because there is a lack of cogent communication. And communication seems (to me) to be the ultimate goal of both the reader and the writer. Or should be.
The quote seems to indicate that certain word combinations (poetry) can somehow communicate something to the reader even if the reader does not technically understand the grammatical definition of individual words and word combinations.
I have a problem believing that.
While seeking a bit of elaboration on the subject, I read a piece from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute titled Understanding and Appreciating Poetry : Afro-Americans and Their Poetry written by Frances Pierce.
LINK:
Instead of saying I read the entire piece, I should say that I read from the piece. It contained too many subjective conjectures by the author for me to give it the credence it probably deserves.
At one point the author writes: "The word poetry almost defies definition. Part of the beauty of poetry is its elusiveness."
That makes no sense to me.
From the piece I was spurred to look up a specific poem:
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in
human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,
and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I do not understand that poem. But it somehow speaks to me. I think.
Perhaps someone more astute or more well-informed than I will attempt to further enlighten me.
Or maybe not.
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HISTORICAL EVENT
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WORD FOR TODAY
renown [re-NOUN]
noun
1. widespread and high repute; fame.
2. wide reputation, especially of a good kind.
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Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
--Abraham Lincoln
NASA TV
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