Interpretation

I agree with Perrine about this notion that not all insights into poetry are correct. Although the way that Perrine began his argument really aggravated me, I still came around to agree with the concept. I wonder if he wrote the intro in a manner to get people to not agree so that it would all come around in the end? It worked if that was his plan. His intro irked me to a degree because I have felt at certain times that a poem really could be about seemingly anything according to my previous experiences. I was bothered by the introduction because it seemed as though this article was going to tell me about how many various interpretations can be correct, but then the author so clearly stated that he was going to argue for the idea that there are incorrect readings of poetry. "In a court of law"(Page 1), really started turning the wheels in my head when I read it because I was forced to think of the proceedings in a court of law. At first I thought of a jury, and how they can truly interpret the evidence represented in any way that they think is correct. Then I circled back around to the evidence and started to understand the meaning that Perrine was inferring. It is not so much about what is thought about the article, but why it is being thought. The evidence is what can be clearly found. What is found in a poem is what an idea about the poem should be based upon. I had never even considered going about an interpretation in this way.
The article really did change my personal viewpoint on the interpretations of poems through the way that Perrine so clearly broke down the poems that we had previously looked at in our class. His logical thinking about the diction the poet had provided us really convicted me. It made me think about what I had thought the poems meant according to what I had read. I realized that I based my thoughts solely on accounts of my own that I recalled in the past. I did not even bother thinking of the obvious flaws in my own conclusion. Because I enjoy science so much, I found it very helpful when Perrine compared the findings in literature to those that are found in the science field. When I read a poem in the future, I will definitely use that idea of looking for my evidence in the poem provided to support my conclusion. I will definitely think about this article often when I am attempting to come up with a reasoning for the majority of my thoughts in this class from now on. They make an argument a lot stronger, and logically sensible.