Hands up. I feel my poetry is void of merit or real consideration because it's simple. There's never any hidden meanings. It doesn't require analysis. It is what it is. But does this mean I can't write poetry? Yes, I can follow the rules and write 'technically' correct verse, but does this mean it automatically has more merit than something I've written from the heart which perhaps isn't technically correct? I feel I need to elaborate on that last paragraph. I'm talking here about free verse, and its 'rules', if any exist in free verse.
The great thing about creative writing is that readers are free to interpret what they read based on their experiences. So even if you don't intentionally add any "hidden meaning" doesn't mean readers won't find any. But more importantly, you should continue to study poetry. The fact that you say it doesn't require analysis leads me to believe you don't put as much thought into writing a poem as you should. In my opinion, one of the things that makes a poem good is that it reveals something ordinary in an extraordinary way. Going forward, you should try to think of creative ways to express ordinary ideas so that your poetry does require some analysis and thought to be able to fully appreciate it. To answer your question, good poems, even seemingly simple one, have deeper meaning once you understand the context. For example, a lot of Chinese poetry is influenced by Buddhism, and someone who hasn't learned about Buddhism likely won't understand the simplistic nature of these poems. Another good example is Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar." At the surface, the poems seems fairly simple, but (depending on your interpretation) once you start thinking about it, you'll find that Stevens was making an observation on the nature of emptiness.
I admit my question is part 'cop out', to excuse my inability to write complex verse, but when I write poetry I'm simply trying to conjure up strong imagery, strong imagery that evokes something in the reader, and I do this because it is when poetry does this to me that I am inspired the most. Take one of my favourite WCW's poems, The Bare Tree: The bare cherry tree higher than the roof last year produced abundant fruit. But how speak of fruit confronted by that skeleton? Though live it may be there is no fruit on it. Therefore chop it down and use the wood against this biting cold. I love this poem, not because it (possibly) talks about the futility of life, or Man's destructive nature, but simply because it conjures up images of a tree, stripped of its leaves and fruit, and thoughts of freezing weather and huddling around a log fire on a winter's night.
When you first attempt anything, there will be room for improvement. Poetry is a distillation of language, and is for that reason more challenging than other types of writing. You spend far more effort carving away excess than adding content in poetry, and to make every phrase carry more meaning, structure, and richness than other forms of writing. So don't ask if it means you can't write poetry. Ask instead if it means you havenlt mastered it yet.
Let me try and approach this another way. And I do this not because I'm not getting the answers I want, but because I'm trying to get a better grip on the complexities (or not) of the form. Again I'm going to use WCW as an example, and one of his shorter, more famous poems, The Red Wheelbarrow. so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. I don't profess to understand this, if indeed there is anything to understand, but let's imagine during an interview by some poetry critique, the question is asked to WCW, "Could you finally settle all the speculation about this poem and explain to us all its true meaning?" WCW laughs and says, "I was staring out the window one rainy day, looking for inspiration, and I saw some chickens stood by a red wheelbarrow in the garden, so I wrote down what I saw." Would this explanation mean the poem was deserving of less or equal merit, compared to that which is bestowed on it currently?
Sure, there's a chance Williams wrote down what he was seeing while looking out a window, but I doubt it. For one, there's an obvious syllabic pattern. Two, given this pattern, Williams would have had to be very aware of word choice. But let's assume he did just jot down what he was seeing. So what? Based on my knowledge of poetry and literary taste, it's a fine poem. How much effort he put into it has no bearing on how much I like or dislike it. To paraphrase the writer and critic Lionel Trilling, the creative writer can tell us what he meant to do, but we don't have to believe him. So Williams' interpretation of the poem, had he given it, wouldn't have mattered.
Oh, I wasn't for one second suggesting Williams didn't carefully consider his words, syllables, pattern, its rhythm. But of course we can still do that without that actual poem having any deep meaning. This I find encouraging. That's not to say I now consider poetry easy, but the confirmation that a poem can be enjoyed, regardless of meaning - or indeed without any meaning - is a good thing, I think.
Meaning may be as simple as capturing a mood with a visual image.to me, the rhythm suggests the movement of the feeding chickens as they peck and step, peck and step. The visual imagery is also compelling. It's a peaceful, bucolic scene I can easily relate to, having watched my son's chickens on quiet morning. Write from your heart, and someone will feel it.
I think great poetry can be deceptively simple. I don't know if that's part of your problem with reading and writing it. Another thing is that poetry takes a lot of revision. A simple one-line poem may have taken six months. There is a famous poet and the name is escaping me, but it's one we all know, who said something like, it takes me eight weeks to write six lines of poetry. I think there is more revision involved in poetry than prose in many cases. Poetry is definitely a hard art to master, that's for sure. But when I work poetry into my daily life (as a reader of it, not so much a writer) I just feel better. The stuff is good for the soul, I think.
Well I must say, on reflection, I'm probably not far off the mark with what I'm trying to achieve with my verse, and probably put too much store in the complexities and hidden meanings of the stuff I read. I appreciate the comments.
I really like this, seriously. Also, are you sure this isn’t about meritocracy vs. monarchy, and rebellion against a leneage that failed the country?
It is a wonderful wonderful poem! Makes me very envious as it appears so very simple, until you try doing something that sounds equally beautiful to the ears, and it ends up sounding like someone's drilling your head with a skewer. You could be right with your analysis, but this is the advantage others have over me. I'm totally blind to meaning, so to me this is a poem about a tree that has stopped bearing fruit, so it may as well be felled and used for firewood.
Follow the history of poetry? You would enjoy the journey... I became disenchanted with the poetry scene as I saw it, real or imagined. Thought if I wasn't in a tight circle of 200 circling around Oxbridge and Bayswater I might as well not submit, but that was only a phase, of course. Online, the amateur poets - the websites attract a lot of suicide and depressed people, narcissists, cat owners, it's off-putting. prejudice again. Here's a modern one, do you know this? A woman sent it to me a long time ago, Charles Bukowski, A Radio With Guts it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street I used to get drunk and throw the radio through the window while it was playing, and, of course, it would break the glass in the window and the radio would sit there on the roof still playing and I'd tell my woman, "Ah, what a marvelous radio!" the next morning I'd take the window off the hinges and carry it down the street to the glass man who would put in another pane. I kept throwing that radio through the window each time I got drunk and it would sit there on the roof still playing- a magic radio a radio with guts, and each morning I'd take the window back to the glass man. I don't remember how it ended exactly though I do remember we finally moved out. there was a woman downstairs who worked in the garden in her bathing suit, she really dug with that trowel and she put her behind up in the air and I used to sit in the window and watch the sun shine all over that thing while the music played. Charles Bukowski
I'm not that familiar with Bukowski's poetry, and I'm not sure why I haven't gone looking for it given that I like his books so much.
I've read a ton of poetry, and a few books on writing and appreciating poetry, but I still don't have a clear idea of what's a poem and what isn't a poem. (And not a few of the people on this forum have pointed this out.) But if I were pressed to make a definition, I'd say that a good poem means more than it says. That's not to say that it has to have hidden meanings, but that it should resonate, creating overtones beyond the simple tones of the words themselves. Take the WCW poemThe Red Wheelbarrow. What would the poem have been without those first words "so much depends on"? They convey that it's not just the visual image that matters, but that the narrator finds an unexpected significance in it, that it affects him in some inexplicable way. We're left to wonder what that significance is, but we know it's important to him. It links us as readers to the narrator. That's not a hidden meaning, but those four words add a dimension ... an overtone ... that makes the poem ring.
Very true and I think a very good summing up of poetry in general. I submitted a poem a day ago, and realise I failed to do this. The poem does nothing other than paint a pretty scene.
I find that searching for a deeper meaning can sometimes be tiring. If I can't find the meaning of a poem and if it does not appeal to ME, it does not say that it's bad. Maybe I'm just the wrong addressee, because I have a different experience than the author. From the perspective of the author: By writing I try to bring structure in my own thoughts. Thus, writing has an end in itself and is not just for conveying potentially hidden messages. Of course... if it does and if you find your audience – all the better. So I would not think in categories like "simple" and "sophisticated" when it comes to structure. More important to me are things like metaphors and parables. But this might be my personel feeling.
Some of new English 'Facebook poetry' is rather too universal to my tastes. Hollie Mcnish on 'Poetry Please' had me gnashing teeth with her poems about her loving the kids so much and blankets are fluffy, and being happy or being sad at festivals [possibly about that kind of thing, I am pig] . I felt like a reactionary 90 year old general. It was quite earnest material. I will have to get in line, suppose, & embrace the future. She said she hated John Betjamin, very, very revolutionary.
