Different Perspective

The first aspect of this essay I would like to comment on is the thesis of this essay. Midway down the first page Perrine says his purpose: "I wish not to advance any new proposition, but only to reassert the accepted critical principle that for any given poem there are correct and incorrect readings...". These thesis is something I've probably been told before but not really believed until this essay. Teachers have told me what poems have meant and I've never really understood why or how they come to the conclusion they do. To me, my confusion and difficulty in reading poetry has been in determining if the poem is literal or symbolic in meaning. Like the Blake poem "The Sick Rose", who really knows what it means? Although I understand Perrines reasoning in determining the correctness of a read of a poem and what things are according to details lining up, I'm not sure any person, besides the poet, could tell me what the things really mean. Perrine can tell me that "The Night-March" isn't about an army, but instead stars. But, what no one can tell me is if those stars are symbolic of something or just stars. So, what I got from this article was that there is correct way in determining what the poem is about but a multitude of ways to interpret symbolism, within reason.

The next aspect I want to comment on is the style Perrine uses. This essay was very similar to the last essay we read about what a good reader does and is by Nabokov. Early in the essay, he says identifying with a character is terrible but later qualifies it. Perrine does a similar thing saying, "That all interpretation of a poem are equally valid is a critical heresy...". A heresy! That seems a bit harsh to me so of course later he concedes. He speaks about the theory that poetry is like abstract art or music and therefore "anything goes" and how the theory that poetry is open to interpretation, when he says the theory came about because, "...withing limits, there is truth in it." So it isn't the work of Satan to interpret poetry in my own way, within reason?