Poetry can utter thoughts one dare not say aloud, nor commit to prose, because poetry is a language of suggestion, interpretation, influence. “It means what it means to you” or “It means what you want it to mean.” That vague avoidance of assigning meaning to words is generally applied to lyrics of songs, but it applies to poetry as well. Poetry can address what may be a cowardly need to say something without accepting responsibility for it. That is, poets, and songwriters, can distance themselves from the genesis of words and lyrics until sufficiently able to observe and interpret external responses to them. One might hope that’s a rarity and that most poets and songwriters are not cowards. I don’t know; I have no way to measure it.
I’m not suggesting what I have written is true, only that it’s plausible. And I can deny believing what I’ve written, because I have plausible deniability.
Thank you, my friend. As usual, your comments are thought-provoking and cause me to reconsider what I said, what I meant, and whether any words are as clear as we suppose them to be.
Wonderful thought, my friend. Thanks for this one. I am so addicted to your blog!
Maybe to encompass as much suggestive meaning as possible is the goal of the writer / poet / songwriter, and thereby go through every passage again and again and again because every time you go you infer new meaning.
Robert Graves said it best of the ancient bards: “To hide the secret.” Supposedly the ancient bards even maintained a “closed fist” as their symbol for secret suggestion.
While riddles and even crossword puzzles are inherent to the trade of meaning-making, i.e.,their word play is simple form and purpose. Parables and poems, on the other hand — especially from the Modern era — are highly suggestive.
I love Carl Sandburg, but his poetic meanings are only a leg lower than that of Allen Ginsberg’s — fairly straightforward.
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
I am mostly touched by the imagery of fog as silent as a treading cat….that sits for a while and silently moves on.
I tend to find more in a piece from Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eye-beams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entre chats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he’s the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charley chaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence