One of the things they teach for medical professions is “the pain is what the patient says it is.” This makes sense. There’s no measuring stick for human suffering, and no objective way to compare pain levels. I feel like I started working on internalizing this truth decades ago, but I’m not always good at it.
But whether it seems like my pain doesn’t measure up, or someone else’s outweighs, or if there just isn’t a scale that can bear such a weight— it always remains true that there’s no measuring stick to gauge your own or someone else’s pain.
But, this only points to the fact that the only gauge we have is “the pain is what the person says it is,” and there are no definitive measuring sticks. This is an important thing to learn whether someone is crying about being overwhelmed with life in general, losing a beloved family member, missing the school dance, or breaking a fingernail. Judging pain worthy or unworthy just a shitty way to be. Everyone has their tolerance threshold. Comparison just makes us lose our compassion, either for the person hurting, or for ourselves hurting.
But there are measuring sticks for other things, well, like how to judge poetry. In this instance, I’m not saying MY measuring stick is THE measuring stick, just that these are the qualities and style I appreciate in poetry and try to utilize in my own.
Because of the difficulty of interpreting poetry, I think a lot of teachers go along the path of “it means whatever you can get out of it,” which is helpful for increasing poetry appreciation, but not for increasing understanding or inspiring the creation of poetry that has consistent reader interpretations.
I emphatically do not believe that “the poem means whatever I think it means,” and the very idea makes me upset, as I think it does a disservice to the author to not try to figure out their intentions in writing. I realize that a poem or song is only as effective as what one can get out of it, and people are welcome to whatever tasty morsels they can glean. However, if one is truly explicating and making the case for their wild personal interpretation that ignores other bits of the poem (or song), or ignores the author… well, that bugs me quite a bit.
Perhaps this is why I am such a shameless Marlovian. Shakespeare has long been read without considering the author, which has made some of his works difficult to interpret, especially the sonnets. I know that not all poems/songs are (auto)biographical, but it seems like they very very often are. I think we should always consider that angle on written works (I forget what this style of explication is called, as it has been more than 20 years since I got that English degree and it’s a use it or lose it kinda thing, eh? Guess I lost it.) But I believe that the author’s perspective and circumstance is generally relevant and should always be considered if possible.
In my own poetry, I am generally trying to tell all the parts of a story in a moment. Capturing all the relevant details to paint a picture for the reader, kind of like a collage. Sometimes I probably collage too much. If something has already been said well, it’s hard not to “sample” it the way one might for a pop song. When rereading my old 2009 manuscript, I found there was a little too much such “sampling” of the bard. Was I trying a little too hard, or is it just impossible not to quote Shakespeare from time to time? Who knows?
But this is the type of poetry I usually am inspired to write, and the type I most enjoy reading— the poems with the stabby feels, like “Once in a while a Protest Poem” by David B. Axelrod, or “Woodchucks,” by Maxine Kumin. Or one that perfectly captures the suffering of the broken heart, like “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. (I’m footnoting the actual poems as well as linking, cause poems should be shared!)1 2 3
So basically, sure if you’re just reading for your own enjoyment, take whatever you will from the experience, but no doubt the author had an intention, and it behooves us to try to figure it out if we are trying to explicate for reals.
"Once in Awhile A Protest Poem" Over and over again the papers print the dried out tit of an African woman holding her starving child. Over and over, cropping it each time to one prominent, withered tit, the feeble infant face. Over and over to toughen us, teach us to ignore the foam turned dusty powder on the infant’s lips, the mother’s sunken face (is cropped) and filthy dress. The tit remains; the tit held out for everyone to see, reminding us only that we are not so hungry ogling the tit, admiring it and in our living rooms, making it a symbol of starving millions; our sympathy as real as silicone.
Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right. The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange was featured as merciful, quick at the bone and the case we had against them was airtight, both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone, but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range. Next morning they turned up again, no worse for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch. They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course and then took over the vegetable patch nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots. The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses. I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing, now drew a bead on the little woodchuck's face. He died down in the everbearing roses. Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard. Another baby next. O one-two-three the murderer inside me rose up hard, the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith. There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps me cocked and ready day after day after day. All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream I sight along the barrel in my sleep. If only they'd all consented to die unseen gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.