POETRY!

I came to the conclusion prior to reading this piece that poetry is something personal and something to be decided personally. I kept that mindset for a very short amount of time while reading this piece. He gives us some fairly general guidelines that allows for a personal interpretation but only under certain factors. After looking through Emily Dickinson's poem, I realized that he is indeed correct.  There were more than a few "ohhhhh, now it makes sense!" moments while reading his explanation of the poetry.  I suppose that is the point of poetry though.  It almost seems silly now to think of how easy we thought it was to decipher what the poetry supposedly meant while in reality, it meant so much more.  Poetry is meant for us to dive deep into pieces and unleash our imaginations so we can really decipher the extravagant meaning.  The exact same occurred while reading Melville's The Night-March. Initially, we want to jump to the conclusion that this poem is, without doubt, about a marching army.  I mean it says "army passes..." "legions stream..." and Perrine even says "wrote a book of poems about the civil war." However, we find out that it was irrelevant and that the poem was actually about stars.

 After reading this entire piece, I've come to the conclusion that it takes a complex and adventurous mind to really figure the meaning of a poem.  As odd as it is, Inception creeps into my mind after reading this.  One must truly examine and question the "reality" of a  poem to figure out if this is infact "reality" or in this case, the correct poem interpretation.  "...the best interpretations will rely on the fewest assumptions not grounded in the poem itself."  After reading that, I could not agree more.  After spending five minutes trying to figure out what exactly that quote means, I eventually realized it summed up everything one needs to know when interpreting a poem. Never assume something about a poem that already is not in it.  Look at the poem and take what is inside of it already to figure out its true meaning.  If done correctly, there may be multiple outcomes and interpretations, but in the end, they are all correct if they all followed the guidelines.  After all, is that not what poetry is about, personal interpretation?