If you can forgive the wiki reference (I know, I know), I read this today and it intrigued me:

New Criticism, as espoused by Cleanth Brooks, W. K. Wimsatt, T. S. Eliot, and others, argued that authorial intent is irrelevant to understanding a work of literature. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley argue in their essay "The Intentional Fallacy" that "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art".[1] The author, they argue, cannot be reconstructed from a writing—the text is the primary source of meaning, and any details of the author's desires or life are secondary. Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that even details about the work's composition or the author's intended meaning and purpose that might be found in other documents such as journals or letters are "private or idiosyncratic; not a part of the work as a linguistic fact" and are thus secondary to the trained reader's rigorous engagement with the text itself.[1]

What do we think about the role of authorial intent for the meaning of poems? Seems like one's opinion on this matter would influence perceptions of the role of the poetry critic and what constitutes a valid read.

Do you think that's true?

P.S. You can also choose to answer stpm's superior question: "Should authorial intent be accounted for when evaluating the success or failure of a poem?"

The arguments they make are persuasive. Outside of these forums, intent is a sunk cost. So, they are correct, it does not matter.

However, if you are offering critique of a poem, then, intent does matter to a certain extent because the author has a certain message they desire to convey and part of critique is commenting on how a well a message or the message is conveyed. You are critiquing for the author. I think that changes things a little bit.

Understanding the authors intent does not add or detract from literature's merit, but it can help you offer a more relevant critique.

(11-14-2017, 12:00 PM)QDeathstar Wrote:  The arguments they make are persuasive. Outside of these forums, intent is a sunk cost. So, they are correct, it does not matter.

However, if you are offering critique of a poem, then, intent does matter to a certain extent because the author has a certain message they desire to convey and part of critique is commenting on how a well a message or the message is conveyed. You are critiquing for the author. I think that changes things a little bit.

Understanding the authors intent does not add or detract from literature's merit, but it can help you offer a more relevant critique.

+2

In other words, the New Criticism deals only with completed (even petrified) works while critique deals with works in progress.  So even the least inisde-baseball form of critique, "my interpretation," is of value to the still-living and -editing author who can compare interpretation with actual (or remembered ) intent and modify the work accordingly.

Which makes another contrast with the New Critic:  unlike the writer of critiques, he is not trying to help anyone.  In fact, since his literary ideology empties the petrified work of meaning, his only course is to pour his own ideological meaning into it; otherwise, he has nothing to say beyond description.  The writer of critiques may also have an agenda, but the work's author is free to treat it as error or misunderstanding.

“what do we think of the role of authorial intent for the meaning of poems?” is a slightly different question than “should authorial intent be accounted for when evaluating the success or failure of a poem?”

the role of authorial intent can be pivotal to our understanding of a poem. and as far as that is the case, i would consider the poem a sort of symbiotic failure (at least in terms of “sense”). this is why i can’t be doing with cryptic poems; they’re all author and no poetry.

ideally we should like to read a poem as if it’d just been puked out of a random poetry generator, and assume all “facts” or “events” of the poem are already intentional, including spelling errors, grammatical errors, and incomprehensibility.

there is a slight difference, as has been mentioned, between forum workshopping and literary criticism proper. because, workshopping critique really does share an actual (not abstract) symbiotic relationship with the poem, albeit a complex one. whereas a poem encased in a book with a barcode must be regarded by the critic as having reached the end of its gestation period and has become stratified across the plane of inconsistency, ready for a sort of phenomenological exploration of the material: a phenomenology of poetry.

this is, of course, an oversimplification, and raises more questions, such as: does a purely phenomenological approach tell us anything about the inter-subjective value, success, or failure of a poem? does a clarification change the experience to such a degree that, far from the prescription to ignore authorial intent, it should be regarded as (at the point of elucidation) an integral part of it? does it matter if our understanding comes from our own—and to use an archaic phrase—imagination after careful concideration; or an explanatory footnote?

in my own rather crude and trite opinion, it’s all a big lumbering living organism with a plexus of nerves and capillary veins clumsily arranged and plugged in to keep it going. sometimes the pendulum swing is towards territorialisation and stratification based on pre-formed structures; other times to destratification and nomadic wandering. the pendulum is rarely ever stopped in its tracks.

it should also be mentioned, as that Dukealien chap suggested, that motivations for advocating one or the other ways of dealing with criticism are sometimes to be taken into account. does the poet who says “well, it’s all interpretation, man” secretly know that he’s wearing no clothes? does the critic, likewise, not want to look like an idiot for not pointing out this “apparent” fact? to be sure, the critic has a more difficult time of it than the artist, in that respect.


ps. it just occurred to me, and at the risk of contradicting something i’ve previously said, in forum criticism understanding authorial intent is essential for the relationship to work. for the critic to “help” the poet, he must understand what the poet’s up to. etc. etc. the alternative is a kind of non-perfecting pedantry. and nobody wants that.

(11-14-2017, 11:18 PM)shemthepenman Wrote:  in my own rather crude and trite opinion, it’s all a big lumbering living organism with a plexus of nerves and capillary veins clumsily arranged and plugged in to keep it going. sometimes the pendulum swing is towards territorialisation and stratification based on pre-formed structures; other times to destratification and nomadic wandering. the pendulum is rarely ever stopped in its tracks.

Agreed. It's a golem of a beast. True story.

---

(11-14-2017, 12:00 PM)QDeathstar Wrote:  The arguments they make are persuasive. Outside of these forums, intent is a sunk cost. So, they are correct, it does not matter.

However, if you are offering critique of a poem, then, intent does matter to a certain extent because the author has a certain message they desire to convey and part of critique is commenting on how a well a message or the message is conveyed. You are critiquing for the author. I think that changes things a little bit.

Understanding the authors intent does not add or detract from literature's merit, but it can help you offer a more relevant critique.

Isn't the best critique one that's freed from what the author thinks you should see in the poem and from what others have seen? There's a reason that we're admonished to not write little blurbs about the poem's intent/meaning in the original post; there's a reason that many choose to not read any of the other comments before submitting their critique so that the read is not influenced or biased in any other direction. So, if you're not reading anything but the poem before you critique, how is authorial intent relevant?

Maybe intent matters more in the early stages of writing, before the poem starts smoking, wearing eye liner, and sneaking out at night....

there’s a difference between writing a poem and writing a thesis on gophers.
If poets knew their own minds well enough to understand what they were writing, they’d just write a note with fifteen bullet points.
Poetry is therapy for the writer, like free association writing, but with rules to give it the semblance of useful work. When the poet writes, he only half knows what his subconscious is trying to see.
Hence the poetry of Eliot and Dylan Thomas, and Hopkins, which seems to have layers of meaning.

So in summary, there is no intent.

If authorial intent does not come across that isn't the reader's fault (unless the reader is a lazy moron--then all bets are off). If the point is unclear the author probably failed.

That said in a workshop authorial intent is important because we are all trying to help the author execute their vision.

(11-15-2017, 05:40 AM)Achebe Wrote:  there’s a difference between writing a poem and writing a thesis on gophers.
If poets knew their own minds well enough to understand what they were writing, they’d just write a note with fifteen bullet points.
Poetry is therapy for the writer, like free association writing, but with rules to give it the semblance of useful work. When the poet writes, he only half knows what his subconscious is trying to see.
Hence the poetry of Eliot and Dylan Thomas, and Hopkins, which seems to have layers of meaning.

So in summary, there is no intent.

Big thumbs up to Achebe, who knew what he was writing, even if he didn't intend to know...

But yes. Poets might make deliberate word choices, but meaning choices? That's up to the reader, and the meaning will shift once it's out of the writer's head. As an editor, one-on-one with a writer, I will sit and ask specific questions about intent -- but as a reader on a workshop, who doesn't get paid to do that, I'd prefer to explore what the poem does to/for me instead and not what the writer's second cousin's racist aunt thought about the dog next door.

(11-15-2017, 06:00 AM)Todd Wrote:  If authorial intent does not come across that isn't the reader's fault (unless the reader is a lazy moron--then all bets are off). If the point is unclear the author probably failed.

That said in a workshop authorial intent is important because we are all trying to help the author execute their vision.

Doesn't this assume that the writer is trying to write something that is accessible to others outside of their own mind? If something cannot survive outside of the writer, there's nothing any of us can do. You say yourself that the secret of poetry is cruelty, and that's often to our sense of what we intended the poem to be. It can be painful to let the poem be what it wants to be -- gotta let the butterfly fly.

I agree with stpm that cryptic poetry is all author and doesn't leave room for a reader -- in this instance, I simply can't help. If there's no room for me, what's to be done?

That to say, I think it depends on the vision.

As to the lazy moron, yes, and those who are criminally lacking in imagination. It does make me wonder what the definition is for a "trained reader's rigorous engagement." Trained as in....an English degree? Being an author oneself? Who decides who's qualified to offer critique?

If the authors intent doesn't matter then it doesn't matter what we assume about the authors intent. The authors vision (which is just a synonym for their intent) also doesn't matter.

---

Quote:If there's no room for me, what's to be done?

Critique isn't about you. There doesn't need to be room for you, necessarily.

---

I wrote a poem about grapes.

You thought it was a great poem about an oranges.

Does that mean the poem was lacking in the grapes department? I think so. If I'm an author and I'm writing about grapes, and I want my poem to be about grapes, and not oranges, all the encouraging words about the poem as one about oranges does me no good, even if the poem has great merit as a poem about oranges.

(11-15-2017, 07:31 AM)QDeathstar Wrote:  Critique isn't about you. There doesn't need to be room for you, necessarily.

Valid point.

I'm speaking from the assumption that critique is sharing one's experience of the poem, what landed and what didn't. That's why I said what I did. I think we have different ideas of what critique should be.

My assertion is that, if there's no intention of being understood, then there's no communal aspect to the poem and there's no reason for it to be here.

Additionally, if there's no effort made to affect the poem to increase its intelligibility to others, then the author is assuming that all minds are like theirs, and this is a fundamental negation of the sparateness and individuality of the other.

There should be room for you too, Death.

(11-14-2017, 11:18 PM)shemthepenman Wrote:  does the poet who says “well, it’s all interpretation, man” secretly know that he’s wearing no clothes? does the critic, likewise, not want to look like an idiot for not pointing out this “apparent” fact? to be sure, the critic has a more difficult time of it than the artist, in that respect.

ps. it just occurred to me, and at the risk of contradicting something i’ve previously said, in forum criticism understanding authorial intent is essential for the relationship to work. for the critic to “help” the poet, he must understand what the poet’s up to. etc. etc. the alternative is a kind of non-perfecting pedantry. and nobody wants that.

wasn´t there a child in that story about the emperor´s new clothes? a court jester  might also expect to get away without punishment.
 
sometimes i think it can be the other way round, too. the beauty (or rather the features) of a dress may or may not be covering a body and if i am too obtuse to imagine the figure it is adorning i have a hard time commenting or maybe it is more like my comments don´t fit the purpose.
so, i also believe it is necessary to at least get a tiny idea of what the author wants to say or the feeling that should be conveyed to (attempt to) give helpful criticism. how  give advice on style without knowing if the author is going to a grunge concert or hiking in the woods or simply staying at home?

---

(11-15-2017, 05:40 AM)Achebe Wrote:  there’s a difference between writing a poem and writing a thesis on gophers.
If poets knew their own minds well enough to understand what they were writing, they’d just write a note with fifteen bullet points.
Poetry is therapy for the writer, like free association writing, but with rules to give it the semblance of useful work. When the poet writes, he only half knows what his subconscious is trying to see.
Hence the poetry of Eliot and Dylan Thomas, and Hopkins, which seems to have layers of meaning.

So in summary, there is no intent.

can you even write a single word without intention, whether it is subconscious or conscious ?
if poems are useful work (to either the author or the reader) is another question, but i wouldn´t say they are generally only seeming so.

(11-15-2017, 08:05 AM)vagabond Wrote:  

(11-14-2017, 11:18 PM)shemthepenman Wrote:  does the poet who says “well, it’s all interpretation, man” secretly know that he’s wearing no clothes? does the critic, likewise, not want to look like an idiot for not pointing out this “apparent” fact? to be sure, the critic has a more difficult time of it than the artist, in that respect.

ps. it just occurred to me, and at the risk of contradicting something i’ve previously said, in forum criticism understanding authorial intent is essential for the relationship to work. for the critic to “help” the poet, he must understand what the poet’s up to. etc. etc. the alternative is a kind of non-perfecting pedantry. and nobody wants that.

wasn´t there a child in that story about the emperor´s new clothes? a court jester  might also expect to get away without punishment.
 
sometimes i think it can be the other way round, too. the beauty (or rather the features) of a dress may or may not be covering a body and if i am too obtuse to imagine the figure it is adorning i have a hard time commenting or maybe it is more like my comments don´t fit the purpose.
so, i also believe it is necessary to at least get a tiny idea of what the author wants to say or the feeling that should be conveyed to (attempt to) give helpful criticism. how  give advice on style without knowing if the author is going to a grunge concert or hiking in the woods or simply staying at home?

---

(11-15-2017, 05:40 AM)Achebe Wrote:  there’s a difference between writing a poem and writing a thesis on gophers.
If poets knew their own minds well enough to understand what they were writing, they’d just write a note with fifteen bullet points.
Poetry is therapy for the writer, like free association writing, but with rules to give it the semblance of useful work. When the poet writes, he only half knows what his subconscious is trying to see.
Hence the poetry of Eliot and Dylan Thomas, and Hopkins, which seems to have layers of meaning.

So in summary, there is no intent.

can you even write a single word without intention, whether it is subconscious or conscious ?
if poems are useful work (to either the author or the reader) is another question, but i wouldn´t say they are generally only seeming so.

You can’t carry out any involuntary action, let alone write, without the intention to do something (whether it, or something else). But that is boring wordplay

If the author doesn't know what he is writing, and writing is subconscious and "therapy" why even edit at all? Especially if the editing is coming from people who are outside of your subconcious. Perhaps editing based on critique actually hurts your poem?

(11-15-2017, 09:27 AM)QDeathstar Wrote:  If the author doesn't know what he is writing, and writing is subconscious and "therapy" why even edit at all? Especially if the editing is coming from people who are outside of your subconcious. Perhaps editing based on critique actually hurts your poem?

Because a well crafted poem is therapy well done
Editing based on critique sometimes hurts the poem because sometimes the critique is rather lame

---

To illustrate with an example, if it was possible to express this baby universe of thoughts, feelings and unattended grocery lists in simpler language, randy old Tom would’ve done it. I find the last two lines to be of ineffable beauty and most likely expressing complex, fuzzy thoughts that can’t ever be precipitated with hydrogen sulphide in the rational  mind’s laboratory:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Maybe it's not meant for us to understand everything written, or its intent. Maybe a poem will never be meant for certain people. Maybe what we don't understand today, we might understand tomorrow. Maybe we haven't arrived. Perhaps levels of intelligence, inability to comprehend or learn, might cause us not to understand the poet's intent, anyway. Maybe where you are I cannot go no matter how hard I try, maybe you will never be where I am. Even if we don't know the intent, those in position to critique in this forum, can ask. Perhaps we don't care to ask, recognizing the poem to be personal, therapeutic, or abstract, why should that stop us from offering help concerning metrics, phrasing, spelling, punctuation, form, etc?

(11-15-2017, 09:27 AM)QDeathstar Wrote:  If the author doesn't know what he is writing, and writing is subconscious and "therapy" why even edit at all? Especially if the editing is coming from people who are outside of your subconcious. Perhaps editing based on critique actually hurts your poem?

As much as it pains me, I have to agree. The initial writing of it would be the end game.

And, I have no problem with that at all. Just don't post it in intensive and then tell everybody that you can't change anything because it was too heartfelt and personal.

Know thyself.

---

(11-15-2017, 06:15 AM)Leanne Wrote:  Poets might make deliberate word choices, but meaning choices?  That's up to the reader, and the meaning will shift once it's out of the writer's head. 

Yes, this is where the rub is: the tension between reader and writer over who gets to determine what the poem means (if it means anything at all). This conflict plays itself out here every day.

But, yeah, that's kind of at the heart of what I took away from the quote. I think it requires a re-imagining of what it means to be an effective writer.

---

(11-15-2017, 10:16 AM)nibbed Wrote:  Maybe it's not meant for us to understand everything written, or its intent. Maybe a poem will never be meant for certain people. Maybe what we don't understand today, we might understand tomorrow. Maybe we haven't arrived. Perhaps levels of intelligence, inability to comprehend or learn, might cause us not to understand the poet's intent, anyway. Maybe where you are I cannot go no matter how hard I try, maybe you will never be where I am.

I'm ok with that.
You're kind, nibbler.

(11-16-2017, 02:59 AM)Lizzie Wrote:  

(11-15-2017, 09:27 AM)QDeathstar Wrote:  If the author doesn't know what he is writing, and writing is subconscious and "therapy" why even edit at all? Especially if the editing is coming from people who are outside of your subconcious. Perhaps editing based on critique actually hurts your poem?

As much as it pains me, I have to agree. The initial writing of it would be the end game.

And, I have no problem with that at all. Just don't post it in intensive and then tell everybody that you can't change anything because it was too heartfelt and personal.

Know thyself.

---

(11-15-2017, 06:15 AM)Leanne Wrote:  Poets might make deliberate word choices, but meaning choices?  That's up to the reader, and the meaning will shift once it's out of the writer's head. 

Yes, this is where the rub is: the tension between reader and writer over who gets to determine what the poem means (if it means anything at all). This conflict plays itself out here every day.

But, yeah, that's kind of at the heart of what I took away from the quote. I think it requires a re-imagining of what it means to be an effective writer.

Wait, there's a lot of waffle going on here.
First, the LITERAL meaning of the poem should be obvious, otherwise the author is just a bad communicator.
We are (presumably) talking about second and third level meanings.

For instance, in the Eliot piece that I posted, we can debate endlessly about the meaning of 'the vast waters'. What is the significance of 'vast'? So many things. Eliot himself would have chosen that word because of its richness (=multiplicity of meanings).
At a literal level we know that the poet is talking about vast waters and not a colostomy.
At a symbolic level, the poem is open to interpretation because there is no defined meaning.

Now as for writing being therapy - there is such a thing as dual purpose. People run because the endorphin release makes them happy, but they also set absolute levels of accomplishment. No runner thinks that his running is as good as Haile Gabrelassie's just because at the end of the day, both are 'happy' (although Haile earned a shitload of dough and probably had a reason to be happy)
Likewise, writing is therapy, but good writing is better therapy.

Now stop splitting hairs and do something useful, like invading North Korea.

Pfft. If we only read for literal meaning, we're not reading poetry at all, just really long and tedious bumper stickers -- so of course it's about shades of figurative possibility. I thought that went without saying, since the bumper sticker kind of writer never stays around here when they find out we're not fooled by the shiny oil slick into thinking that there's depth in the puddle.

Lizzie is correct in that there must be a tension between writer and reader, with the text in the middle -- it is a conversation that, outside of a forum like this one, the text should be having on its own without the writer holding its hand. There is conflict too often on the site because writers forget that they're going to have to give up the helicopter at some point if they want their little childers to survive out in the big bad world -- and if they've no intention of letting go of them, why bother writing and posting in the first place? Just do a Youtube tutorial on contouring or something else that gets you adoration from people who don't really mean it.

And nibbed is spot on -- we can ask about intent if we want, because there's someone there to answer (who may not choose to, of course). And if we don't care about the intent (personally, I'm with the post-structuralists on that one in that writers will always reinvent their history or purpose to the point where it's unreliable and only the text is authentic), what's wrong with critiquing other aspects? Many a poem has been made or broken by a line break, meter or punctuation choices.

I think my example regarding my poem about grapes explains perfectly well why intent is relevant when critique a poem. There is nothing wrong with critiquing line break, meter, punctuation, etc but if you knew the authors intent you could better help them write the words that convey the meaning.

Any examples anyone posts from a published poem aren't relevant in the sense that the author is no longer editing the poem, and isn't asking for our critique.

---

Quote:much as it pains me, I have to agree. The initial writing of it would be the end game.

I do not agree with that statement, I was just pointing out a logic error (proven by empirical evidence); though Achebe posted a fair counter point. I've seen many poems helped by critique here to say critique doesn't matter. Intent does, and I think most of the time readers can indentify the intent, or at least part of it. If they can't they label it as "too abstract" and move on..