Published poets, how ticked off do you get, when your poetry is misinterpreted?

Question

I usually send mine to Poetry.com for the free copywrite. I also send some to a company in England. Poetry. com offers CD's with your poetry critiqued by a so-called professional poetry reader. OMG! They fouled up the meaning of my poem (below), read it wrong, added words I didn't write (UGH! like THE rain...not rain), and even compared my poem to John Keats, saying it was about earth, when it wasn't. It's about abortion! They had the nerve to call it full of vitality, when the dang butterfly was stepped on and killed!!!!!
Do you think these so-called professionals know wtf they're talking about?????


Pretty Butterfly, Don't Cry
Like stepping on a butterfly
Who is wet and cannot fly,
And on the sidewalk, trying to dry,
Knowing rain, the reason why
That its own beauty could not shine
Until the tears of God's great sky
Would set it free, so sparkles climb,
And come to shallow human eyes.
But so, it never did arrive,
That its life could live, but died.
And all that flashed within its mind,
Was that love didn't come this time,
As the whim of foot declined.
Oh, don't cry, pretty butterfly!
Your life, snuffed out, not defined!
Never mind. Go ahead and cry.


Tracy L. Richards
Copyright ©2007 Tracy L. Richards

Nice answer is6005, but the point is, they did it without my consent! I wish you all could have heard they way they read it. Running on, leaving out commas, ignoring exclamation marks....John Keats! I could never compare to him! What's up with that???

Sorry to a certain answerer, but it's just not true that every poet is accepted by poetry.com. I've had over 10 years experience with them, and know this for a fact. PS my poem is not poorly written, you're just not a person who understands poetry, and free expression. I have a simular impression of your answer.

Answer 1

I've got a book out right now, and my view on poetry, even my own, is that only the author knows how it is intended, and therefore the only "right" interpretation comes from them. However, there are people who have read my poems differently than I intended, shared the difference with me, and I was like, "Wow, never even thought of that!" As long as they're taking something from it so that it means something to them personally, that I can deal with. A couple times I have even seen that, had I thought that far, I WOULD have intended what the person thought I intended.

Professionals, unlike the average reader, are usually a bit screwed up (until, of course, we become professionals, lol).

Answer 2

If you send your work to poetry.com "for the free copywrite," if you believe that the authors on the poetry.com website or in its anthologies are "published poets" in any meaningful sense, if you expect honest, useful critique from the ripoff artists at poetry.com -- then you are fair game for the scam they are running and they're entitled to keep bleeding you for as much money as they can get.

You're smart enough to know that you don't deserve to be compared with Keats. Now get a little smarter. Stop sending your poems to that worthless organization. Start reading more good poetry. Take a writing class. Join a poetry workshop where you can get real critiques of your work. Warning, the criticism will sometimes be painful. At poetry.com, you are simply paying a bunch of hustlers to massage your ego. Serious writers who tell you the truth about your work will not always make you feel good, but they might help you improve the quality of your writing.

Answer 3

Poetry should be symbolic and subjective. I'm not saying the author should not have a specific intention when writing a poem, but I think it silly for said author to focus on how others interpret it. Poetry is like paintings or photgraphy, the viewers/readers need to develop their own connection to the piece otherwise it is just words or a picture to them, and if you can't accept how the reader interprets the work, then you should write for yourself and never share them with others. Unless you plan to write a detailed synopsis at the beginning of each poem, then you should never expect others to draw the same conclusions from reading the piece as you did while writing it, in fact it is not unusual for authors to reread their old work and find it too has attained new meaning in some way due to their own life changes since the time it was written.
btw, if you hadn't said it was about abortion I would not have made that connection either, doesn't mean it was bad or that I was wrong, I have simply not had to deal with abortion first hand in my life, so it is not the first thing I thought of while reading this.
My comments were primarily about worrying about how others interpret your work, as far as changing what you wrote, then I can only suggest they were offering some edit critiques, which may or may not have enhanced the piece. I can appreciate how that could be annoying, but if handled well it is called constructive criticism and can be very benefitial to improving your skills as a writer.

Answer 4

In order to answer your question, I have to make an unpleasant, uncongenial observation. Your poem is a poorly written, amaturish piece of dogeral. I do not usually comment negatively on poems posted here--it is just unecessarily cruel and pointless. But you want to know why you are meeting with frustration when you deal with poetry.com, and that can't really be explained without also explaining that poetry.com is a scam artist operation that deals only with naive, unskilled, uneducated, largely untalented, "poets" who don't know any better. They accept every poem they receive, notify every "poet" who sends them work that they have been selected as a "finalist" and that their work will be included in a volume or on a CD which, surprise, surprise, you, your family and friends can purchase from them! It is no surprise that the reader on the CD would have butchered your poem--they don't care at all about what they are doing. They are simply churning out CDs and books to sell to their winners. Furthermore, your poem is so poorly written that it would be difficult for anybody but you to read it aloud. And the fact that it is about abortion is in no way clear from what you have written. I agree, they were pretty stupid to say the poem was full of vitality--it is well enough written so that I would blame poetry.com for that mistake. But, again, they are a sham operation and don't care at all about your poem. They just wanted to flatter you and sell you a copy of your own poem back to you. Congratulations for at least sensing that they are not legitimate.

No credible literary journal or poetry magazine, regardless of the editor's own critical aesthetic, would ever consider publishing your poem. I am not trying to be mean. I honestly feel bad about telling you this. But you asked the question and were brave enough to publish the poem, so you deserve a serious, adult answer.

For the record, there is absolutely no need to copyright your poems. You own the copyright, automatically. Even if a real magazine accepted your poems, they would only get first North American (or European) rights and the copyright would automatically revert to you on publication. Nobody is going to steal your poems. The only written work worth copyrighting is something that somebody might potentially steal and use to make money. If you are worried about that happening to your poems then you really need to get a clue from the clue bag. And I don't mean that because your poems aren't "good enough" to steal--nobody's poems, no matter how good, have any financial value. The very best poets in the country don't make any real money selling their poems.

If you had stated up front that you have "over ten years experience" with poetry.com I would have realized you are not smart enough to be worth discussing this with. I certainly do not generally assume that an inability to write poetry equates to a low IQ. Unfortunately in your case, it does.

Answer 5

You can't expect better from poetry.com.

Answer 6

If I was concerned
about how people
interpret my
writing,
photos
and music,
I probably would
quit doing it.
But I'm not,
so I haven't.

Answer 7

misinterpreted? Not at all misprinted completely!
what you can control you do so what you can not you let go of it saves on ulcers.