With all the resources the net offers, why do people post questions about interpreting poetry? Just curious?

Question

I have ran into numerous posters asking for aid on interpreting poems, on meter, rhyme scheme, metaphors and so on......

With a lil research, these answers can be answered so why post and wait on the responses of others? What is it about anothers opinion that we need?

Answer 1

I think many people don't know how to do a simple search on the net. It might be because they have not been taught so, which is a pity: it is so simple.

Answer 2

I'm inclined to read many of the requests for help with poem interpretation more charitably than those for math or history homework, etc. Any non-developmentally-disabled person can eventually solve for x where 3x + 7 = 19, but understanding poetry isn't something that a person can accomplish by just trying really hard. There's a sense in which you either get it or you don't, and I think that hinges on things that are often beyond a person's immediate control. My mother was a writer, and I grew up reading poetry; I've read thousands upon thousands of poems and written papers on some of them. How could I expect everyone else to have enjoyed the same advantages? If you don't customarily read poetry, it can be completely bewildering, like trying to read something in a unknown foreign language.

I know people who have graduated from college and still have the impression that poetry just doesn't make sense -- that it's some sort of elaborate practical joke conducted by English majors. They're smart people; it's just that poetry isn't part of their experience in the same way that it's part of yours or mine.

Anyway, I sometimes do help out the people asking about interpreting poetry. It's my (perhaps naive) hope that if they can just see how it's done, what sort of things readers of poetry look for and how they apply them, that they'll begin to develop and use those skills themselves.

Answer 3

Many of the online resources can be intimidating, and many simply don't know how to access the best resources. Wikipedia is ghastly, anyone can write to it and some are unscrupulous about overwriting valid information with gross disinformation. Google searches are time consuming and often lead to a lot of advertisements before you get to what you want. Something as simple as a misspelled word can run to an absolute dead end. It runs on what's popular, not what's informative, often as not that comes up with a pile of trash. Not everyone knows how to access university sites and style books or which libraries are likely to have the best information that's age appropriate. And yes, some of us are just old fogies who like helping others. It also gives us a chance to share with each other, even though that bit about golden age is a bunch of crap!

[So many of your top contributors in poetry have weighed in on this one. We experience and critique each other's work. There's well over 250 years of combined experience in our answers from different perspectives and different countries. A couple of us have been reading and writing poetry for over 50 years. Where else do you see this type of forum? If but one young person can catch the spark and love from any one of our answers, we count it the greatest treasure.]

Answer 4

The resources available on line are frequently useless to those with NO background understanding--and there are a lot of us who have no background understanding of many things. There are many areas of knowledge--and every one of those is an area of ignorance until you've played around in that arena. Few of us are natural autodidacts; most of us seek a mentor--or at least a few hints from someone who has been there before.

Interpretation is inherently difficult for those who have no experiential basis for interpretation. A 'theoretical' is useless--meaningless--without some experiential underpinning. But you might be able to find some common experience that can be stretched a bit.

The 'half-assed,' unsophisticated answer from an amateur who has herself had 'the same problem recently' might be the response to a question asked that will be most useful to the asker, for dealing with elementary problems by supplying elementary solutions in elementary language.

You don't ask the experts first--you ask someone who is likely to understand your problem as you understand it. Y!Answers supplies PLENTY of amateurs who can help you take those baby steps forward; and they're often more effective than the experts in giving that assistance.

The irony of professionalism/expertise is that the elementary problems are not forgotten by those who get past them but the all-important stumblings toward solution of those elementary problems are often forgotten--or they are suppressed in memory. The expert says to the tyro "Here's how I did that"--and it's a lie of omission that gives only a lifeless algorithm, useless to a student. This does not minimize expertise--but it does weaken the proposition that those who know how to do something well can teach others how to do it.

As it is in lumberjacking, or mathematics, or Chinese cookery, so it is with poetic interpretation. I need to know how an axe should be sharpened--and why--before I try felling a tree. I should have a rough idea of what a number is before I screw around with differential equations. I need to know about hot things before I mess with a wok.

A kid who asks about interpreting poetry here might not yet know the difference between a 'theme' and a 'subject matter,' for instance--so when the expert speaks expertly of 'this daring, even Promethean theme that departs from tradition,' the kid is left totally in the dark, as he had the idea that the poem was about carp fishing, which, indeed, is the subject matter--but that is a matter of no importance to the expert, so it goes unmentioned. The kid learns nothing of the difference between 'theme' and 'subject.'

But the other answers might be useful for their LACK of sophistication:

"The poem isn't really about carp fishing; it's about sharing secrets."

"Subject is carp. But forbidden knowledge is being learned--and will be shared. Cool poem."

"A thief who steals what shouldn't be held as private property is a good guy."

"I wonder what bait he was using."

"Reminds me of 'Prometheus Bound,' but I can't say why exactly."

The questions that seek technical assistance (nuts & bolts 'metaphor', 'rhyme', 'meter' poetic jargon schtick) here at Y!Answers (in the face of all that readily available online information) probably DO reflect a kind of laziness, or lack of method--but even there the non-experts' answers may do better than the experts' answers do at paving the path to understanding.

There are other possibilities, but let me lastly consider this possibility: the asker is just a silly, whose imagination got him or her only so far as Yahoo! Answers. Now, like a lobotomized rodent trapped in a right angle corner, he looks to the left and sees a wall, he looks to the right and sees a wall. He's trapped, hopelessly trapped, and he taps his keyboard desperately, wondering if that panicky act is a metaphor for putting a message in a bottle, or maybe it's the other way 'round, and my homework is due tomorrow morning.

Answer 5

This is a forum to obtain and convey knowledge and opinion. It seems more "human" to request opinions from real people in real time. Otherwise, why would we need the Y!A at all? It's also a way of determining how well opinions match with research done on other sites.

Answer 6

From now on I'm going to write my poetry on paper and send it snail mail. Life is getting too rough here.

Answer 7

Many don't know how, and many just want someone else to do the work for them while they play games online instead of finding their own information. Either way, I try to help as long as it doesn't feel like I'm doing their homework for them. I'd rather give them a link so they can find it themselves.

dd

Answer 8

Laziness. We are cultivating a culture of laziness.

Look at how language has devolved into text message-ese and how 50% of marriages end in divorce. This is only because people are too lazy to type full words when they communicate and too lazy to work hard at something that can only succeed when you work hard.

Answer 9

I think it is about bonding...real people, real answers, real feelings...opinions...that would be the reason I would do it if I wanted my poetry to be out there on the net...I think of my writing as a child of mine...don't want to stick them out in cyber space just yet...

Answer 10

Aside from the obvious benefit of having others do your homework, when you get an original response it won't sound plagiarized when you use it.
Margot

Answer 11

On the one hand, you could assume it's laziness and lack of gumption, lack of information skills.

On the other hand, it's probably more likely that posting your question to Yahoo Answers is a smart, efficient strategy, a "maximizing" strategy.

When you have a whole cyber-universe of liberal arts majors with hypertrophied intellects, deeply nostalgic for those golden days of long ago when they could raise their hand and nail a teacher's question ...

And now you can post your teacher's question and tap right into that vein of "I know! I know! Pick me! Pick me!" sick puppy egotism, why not go for it?

Call it the Lending Tree strategy -- when nerds compete to answer your questions, you win.

God, I'm bleak.

Anyway, I hope when you're deciding on who came up with the best answer for this, you ...

pick me! pick me!
I knew this one! I had the best answer!