Perrine's "The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry."

After reading Perrine's article, I neither agree nor disagree fully with Perrine. As is any student's wish, I would love if any interpretation of a poem would be correct; however, this is not the case. Some interpretations follow closely to the implied meaning, while others stray in the wrong direction. My problem with deeming an interpretation incorrect is that sometimes poets do not have an intended meaning. As Perrine quoted Yeats, "I shall not trouble to make the meaning clear... The meaning maybe different with everyone". This exemplifies that some meanings are determined by people other than the poet. How can someone other than the poet decide what the writer meant in a poem? In everyday life, this would be like putting words in someone else's mouth. Others can only speculate what the poet meant by his/her writing. Despite this, people still feel as though their interpretation is correct and indisputable. Sadly, many poets do not dispute the interpreted meanings because this would be "admitting failure" that their poem has less meaning that what others found. I agree with Perrine in his statement that "Any interpretation is acceptable which lies within that area [of meaning]".  Certainly some interpretations can be outlandish and without foundation, but sometimes the "correct" interpretations do seem outlandish and without foundation to students. As students, our job is to learn to look deeper into the poems without losing the details directly in front of us.

After reading this article, I will definitely take a different approach to studying poetry. Even though I did not completely agree with Perrine, I think that he offered good insight into interpreting poems. Previously, my interpretations were based on whatever came to my mind first, and I would try to make sense of my scattered thoughts. This led to a complex and unfounded meaning, which was probably incorrect. Before, I had not thought that poems contained facts, so I accepted my random views of interpretation. I like patterns and structure, so Perrine's comparison of interpreting poems to judging a new hypothesis really helped me to accept his view on interpretation. Not all interpretations will be spot-on correct, but by keeping Perrine's article in mind, I should be able to more correctly interpret poems. After reading this article, I will interpret based on the facts within the poem and will remember to keep my interpretation as simple as I can while still accounting for all the facts in the poem.