11-28-2012, 10:56 PM
Context is the issue. If a poem is a certain kind of gun, the talk about the poem is how to use the gun. I don't think the meaning of a poem has to be directly clear. "Symbolist" poetry, for example; it's not about what the words logically mean, but the effects of the feelings (or multitude of effects and feelings) behind the words that carry you to another kind of meaning. Or in the case of someone like Anne Sexton, while many of her poems are clear, some of them lean on personal experiences that might not be familiar to the reader. In a case like that, a person is in danger, or at least feels themselves in danger, of losing their self, losing their sanity: and so they use poetry to keep a grip on who they are: as autobiography is just as difficult to write (and just as 'fictional') as fiction, or fantasy. Of if someone says "Muslim", are they using it in the context of Islam, or in the context of how many equate "Muslim" with "terrorist"? And the person writing the poem, which context are they using? and in what context are they using that context? Sometimes it's either/or in context, sometimes it's both/and. Plus what the reader brings to the experience.