spiderfrommars
New member
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2012
- Messages
- 36
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- xNTP
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- 8w7
- Instinctual Variant
- sp/so
I think that if you get that out of a meaning the author didn't intend, then fine. But I do think whatever the author intended most often provides the most cohesion and beauty to the work. And I think building a poem around a definite and intentional theme is the best way to approach it, even if you don't quite understand the theme yourself.
Yeah, I think I was very dramatic in my statement. I actually do think works should have a definite theme– but not a definite interpretation. I have a poem which one person thinks it's about the American Civil War, and another thinks is about a person being betrayed by a close friend. What those interpretations have in common is the feeling of loss and abandonment, and of a sudden change that effects the outlook of the speaker permanently. So they're different interpretations, but they're not random, either. I think my original post implied that I was down with randomness, and I'm not, really. I just think the author's original intention is often vague, whereas the idea of a correct interpretation would suggest it's specific. That's not the case for me, and it doesn't seem to be the case for a lot of people I know.
I might be too vague in my intentions, perhaps to my detriment. It certainly makes me a poor fiction writer. (I don't write fiction seriously, but I do it frequently.)
Also, your signature cracks me up.