Perrine Poetry

In my opinion, I don't believe that there are right and wrong ways to interpret a poem. I agree with Perrine's statement that "there are only readings which differ more or less widely from a statistical norm." Who is to judge if an interpretation is right or wrong? A reader has that freedom to describe a poem any way he or she believes is correct. The only criteria the interpretation must fall into is that it "must be able to account satisfactorily for any detail of the poem" and the interpretation must rely "on the fewest assumptions nor grounded in the poem itself." The account cannot be too far-fetched and ridiculous. It must account for as many known facts without being contradicted by a fact. Although this may seem restricting, I think it is an excellent way to stay on track when trying to interpret the meaning of a poem.

This article gave me a new insight on how to analyze poems. I need to look deeper into the meaning and not go for the obvious answer. For example, I took the Melville poem to be about an army march through the darkness when it is actually about the stars and the night sky. When Perrine first mentioned this, I was shocked and could not believe how far-fetched he sounded. But when he started to explain the poem and provided examples of the words used ("bright", "beaming", etc.) I began to understand. If I never read this article, I would have never guessed that poem was about the stars. Now, I understand that I must look at the symbols and all the different meanings of words to interpret the real meaning of a poem. It may take a long time, but I believe that will be able to analyze the real meanings of poems.